Aside from being a country with one of the richest cultural histories, India is now the fifth largest economy globally, and is expected to maintain its $3.7 trillion economy in 2023. In addition, it recently eclipsed China as the world’s most populous nation.
India’s tech sector makes a significant contribution to this global powerhouse and the government is working to push the envelope further and build the right conditions needed to create the next breakthroughs in technology.
Founders and executives from India have also become leaders of tech enterprises in Silicon Valley and across the globe.
This list takes a look at the top 15 tech Indian entrepreneurs and leaders that are catching our attention in 2023 with their innovative business models, novel ideas and leading initiatives.
Vinay Agrawwal – Hubler
Founded in 2016, Hubler is Vinay Agrawwal’s response to the challenges that today’s business enterprises face. A Software as a Service (SaaS) company, Hubler allows companies to optimize and evolve their workforce. Its DIY cloud platform that takes coding away from business applications, empowering anybody to create business solutions through diverse tools and services.
Agrawwal is no stranger to creating tech solutions for the modern business world. Before Hubler he founded the tech communication service company Unicel Technologies to support major companies in India.
Vidit Aatrey – Meesho
As founder and CEO of the Indian social commerce start-up Meesho, Sanjeev Barnwal set himself an ambitious and simple goal: to democratize the internet. His venture looks to create an ecosystem that empowers “all small businesses to succeed online.”
As an e-commerce platform, Aatrey and his team claim to have digitalized hundreds of thousands of small and midsized businesses thanks to their 0% commission policy.
Currently, Meesho has built a network of over 13 million entrepreneurs, reaching out to rural women in an effort to free the economic potential of poor and underprivileged women by training them and digitalizing their business ventures.
Venkatesh (Venky) Sundar – Indusface
With over 5,000 customers globally, Venkatesh Sundar’s application security company, Indusface, has confirmed its position as a leading software provider across industries including banking, healthcare, finance, and retail. It helps companies looking to protect themselves from the looming digital threats on the web.
Indusface’s award-winning platform features an extensive arsenal against cybercrime and bot attacks that encompasses web application scanners, web application firewalls, DDoS & BOT Mitigation, CDN, and threat intelligence engine to secure their customers’ web and mobile Applications.
Murali Nethi – Snapblooms/ Hana Florist POS
With an extensive career in computer science and a solid track record in providing IT solutions to various industries, Nethi has a proven career in delivering IT solutions to multiple industries. Murali Nethi founded Hana Florist POS, a POS system that provides florists worldwide with the necessary tools to innovate and enhance their retail flower business.
Thanks to Hana, florists can keep live track of their deliveries, take credit card payments safely and reliably every time, and set up their personal florist websites.
Nethi also fathered Snapblooms, an online marketplace for florists. Both Snapblooms and Hana Florists work together, Nethi partnered with both services to fuel online orders.
Sanjoe Tom Jose – Talview
Sanjoe Tom Jose, CEO and Co-Founder of Talview, launched his AI-powered tool in 2017 to provide a modern answer for employers and educators looking to streamline their hiring and credentialing processes.
A genuine expert in SaaS enterprises, Sanjoe’s approach to recruitment and talent life cycle led him to implement an AI-powered solution for screening, conducting interviews, and making online assessments and proctoring.
Riaz Syed – Infinant
In 2021, Riaz Syed founded Infinant, a fintech company that provides the technology and power tools for banks to embed fintech in their own applications.
Through their interlace platform, Infinant provides a cloud-based solution for financial institutions, brands, and other fintech to launch their embedded banking programs.
Sashank Purighalla – BOS
Sashank Purighalla is a technology entrepreneur who, for over 20 years, has provided start-ups and enterprises with technology solutions. His background in software engineering pushed him to found the cloud infrastructure BOS Framework in 2017.
BOS supplies a friendly platform where clients can carry out the cloud enablement process specific to their business or task, whether it is a new cloud project, migrating an application to a cloud, or managing an existing cloud environment. Users can tailor what they need through a single interface.
Prukalpa Sankar – Atlan
For businesses around the world, effective data management and how to interpret it is crucial. That is why Prukalpa was motivated to co-found Atlan in 2019. The company offers a metadata platform that allows entire teams to sift through their data universe, with the help of columns and queries to metrics and dashboards, users can access and read the data they need like never before.
Prateek Panda – Phyllo
Prateek Panda is the VP of Marketing at Phyllo and is also the Founder of The Tech Panda. He earlier founded the tech startup AppKnox, and he is also a Mentor at Founder Institute.
When he is not working on his full-time job, he spends time with other startup founders to mentor them and help them avoid some of the mistakes that he made during his startup journey.
Dr Bhaskar Ramamurthi – IITM
Dr. Bhaskar Ramamurthi is the Director at India’s leading deep tech start-up incubator. With 300 start-ups valued at $1.5 billion USD, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) has created over 4,000 jobs.
The experts behind IITM nurture and fuel entrepreneurial spirit within and outside the institute, assisting students, faculty members, and external entrepreneurs to develop new tech companies.
IITM is behind key incubators for specific sectors, such as the Rural Technology Business Incubator, funded by the World Bank and India’s government, the Biotechnology Department, and the student hub, The Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Madras.
Akhilesh Vyas – Start-up India
From 2017 to 2018, Vyas acted as the coordinator for Abhyuday, IIT Bombay, a student-led social organization that looked to inspire students to work for a better society.
Vyas has led different research in tech and was a program manager for the healthcare platform Nova Benefits.
Currently, Vyas is a manager in the State-sponsored start-up initiative Start-up India.
Rajan Bajaj – Slice
Understanding the demands of new generations and their interaction with technology, Rajan Bajaj took on the task of redesigning the financial experience for Millennials and Gen Z and founded Slice, where he is currently the CEO.
Slice is the start-up fintech that allows users to make easy payments and transactions while discarding cash and credit card hassles through a single platform. It also provides financial services such as flexible and accessible credit loans for users.
Sourabh Gupta – Skit.ai
Along with the need for tech-based solutions in the financial and banking industries comes the need to automate collecting services for the millions of default loans in the US, a task that the founder and CEO of Skit.ai, Sourabh Gupta, decided to address.
His conversational AI provider has reinvented and automated interactions with collection agencies in the US. Skit.ai enables collection companies to engage with consumers in a personalized and intelligent conversation, automating up to a million weekly debt collection calls.
Skit.ai also computes relevant data for companies, such as the propensity of the consumers to pay, also managing calls so only critical and complex calls are transferred to a live collector.
Aastha Grover – Start Up India
Aashta Grover is a founding member and head of the Start-up India Initiative, a government program that looks to foster entrepreneurship and innovation in India through the creation of an ecosystem aimed at fostering and creating start-ups.
The Start-up India initiative was officially announced in 2016, with Grover leading the team behind the entire start-up ecosystem, providing access to the market and funding for entrepreneurs while exchanging knowledge.
Sameer Nigam – PhonePe
Amassing over two billion transactions and digitalizing millions of small merchants, PhonePe is now India’s leading fintech and app solution. Founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, the mobile payments app allows its users to transfer money to anyone just by using their cellphone number, with over 450 million registered users in the country by 2023.
With one out of every five Indians on PhonePe, Nigam’s fintech giant has worked to provide secure and safe transactions every time, using cutting-edge technology to ensure its client’s financial safety.
