A 45-minute video conversation with Rajan Anandan felt like an exhilarating, rollercoaster ride that ended way too soon. His belief in India’s growing ecosystem of startups, the rising talent of founders, and the country’s journey towards becoming an AI powerhouse is filled with highly infectious enthusiasm. More importantly, it is also well substantiated by the examples he cites after almost every statement.

Anandan has almost become synonymous with the growth of the internet in India, especially during his eight long years at Google. And now he is championing AI by not only investing in companies but also being a very vocal champion of India’s potential in this sector.

Having worked in leadership roles at tech giants, including Microsoft and Dell, Anandan has had a truly illustrious career. And now as managing director of venture capital firm Peak XV Partners and its early-stage investing platform Surge, he has a front-row seat to India’s most exciting new companies.

However, he still cites failure as a bigger teacher than success. And no, he never thinks about his legacy. At the very end, he reveals that what really matters to him is actually very simple: showing up and being grateful. 

In this interview, we talk to him about the nuances of institutional investing, innovative startups, the importance of storytelling, Surge’s intense mentorship program, and, of course, AI.

The full interview is behind the paywall on Campaign India: https://www.campaignindia.in/article/we-want-to-help-india-become-the-most-innovative-nation-in-the-world-rajan-anandan/4npc32sgsy67cwfkgsmj9126dm

I am posting some excerpts below:

If you look at the last five years, what have been some of the biggest shifts you’ve seen in founders? And if you look across that period, are there any common patterns you can identify when it comes to what drives success or failure?

In India, what’s steadily improving is our talent density. The founder pool just keeps getting stronger and they come with far more experience now. In certain sectors, like fintech, I would argue we already have the best founders in the world. 

If you look at what makes Silicon Valley special, it essentially comes down to massive talent density, access to capital, and a strong ecosystem. Those three factors feed into each other. Right now, much of that ecosystem in Silicon Valley is centred around AI.

In India, the same is increasingly true in parts of consumer commerce as well. We’ve seen the rise of quick commerce platforms and large horizontal quick commerce companies like Blinkit. Now we’re seeing the next generation of vertical platforms emerge, and many of those founders come with deep operating experience. They’ve built and scaled products inside large platforms and understand commerce very well.

Another pattern is repeat founders. For example, look at companies like Emergent, an AI company founded by Mukund Jha, who was earlier the co-founder of Dunzo. Even though Dunzo didn’t have the outcome he may have hoped for, he had already built a company, raised capital, and gone through the entire startup journey. That experience becomes incredibly valuable the second time around.Founders with that level of operating and scaling experience simply didn’t exist in India 10-15 years ago. Let’s also keep in mind that InMobi became India’s first unicorn in 2011, only around 15 years ago. 

Personally, I meet founders of new startups every day, and the one thing I consistently notice is this: the quality of founders in India is remarkably high, and it just keeps getting better.

Since you brought up the fintech example, let me jump to another question. India has shown significant growth and leadership in fintech. At the same time, there’s a lot of discussion around AI and India’s ambition to become an AI superpower, something you’ve been a vocal champion of. What are the biggest lessons from India’s fintech story that could apply to AI?

I think if you look at fintech in India — and specifically at digital payments — India leads the world in real-time digital payments. The foundation for that was UPI. And UPI worked for two key reasons: it was essentially free, and it was an open infrastructure that others could build on top of.

There are some important lessons from that for AI in India. First, for AI to be adopted at a population scale, it has to be extremely affordable. Anything that scales in India has to be extremely affordable. Second, AI in India has to work in local languages. India has 1.4 billion people, but perhaps only around 100-200 million have any real proficiency in English. The rest of the country operates in local languages. So AI systems that truly work across Indian languages become incredibly important. Third, voice and video will  dominate over text in India. Multimodal interfaces are critical. Many Indians prefer listening or watching rather than reading long responses, which is why voice interfaces in particular are beginning to take off.

When you put all of that together — smaller models, local language capability, voice and video interfaces, and uniquely Indian use cases — it creates a massive opportunity for AI companies built specifically for India. 

What’s also different today compared to, say, when I joined Google in 2011 is the maturity of the ecosystem. Back then, India had no unicorns, 10 million connected smartphone users, very little venture capital, and virtually no world-class product managers. Today, we have over 120 unicorns, a large developer ecosystem, far more venture capital, and world class founders in many sectors. 

We still need more AI researchers, but the foundation is much stronger than it was 15 years ago. That’s why you’re seeing companies like Sarvam emerging, building foundation models, trained entirely from scratch in India while keeping costs extremely low. We’re also starting to see this in AI applications. For example, one of the fastest-growing AI tutoring companies in the world right now is an Indian company called Supernova. It started with an AI tutor helping Indians learn English, and it’s already crossed Rs 100 crores in revenue run rate and will grow 5x this year.

Our view is that in many sectors like entertainment, education, healthcare, travel, commerce, Indian AI companies will win the India AI opportunity. As we have seen in the past, India is usually not the first, second, or third when it comes to new technologies, but when we get going, we do get to the top – this journey usually takes a decade. The same will play out in AI.

Your life sits at the intersection of technology and venture capital for the most part. However, you have a deep engagement with art, culture, and design in your personal life through your wife, Radhika Chopra (Founder at No. 3 Clive Road). Does that influence the way you think about fields that are otherwise so analytical, like tech and venture capital?

Art, culture, and design is part of my wife Radhika’s world. I’m just an extraordinary beneficiary of it. I love it because I don’t really know much about that world, so it’s a fascinating learning experience for me. Through Radhika, we’ve come to know a lot of artists, designers, musicians, fashion designers, and architects.

I would say they are very different worlds, so there’s no direct influence. However, creativity matters. One area where I do see a connection is storytelling. Many of our friends in the arts are incredible storytellers. They can capture your imagination and bring something to life in a very powerful way.

And in startups, storytelling is critically important. Founders often have just a couple of minutes to get someone excited about what they’re building. They need to communicate vision and possibility. That’s something artists do exceptionally well, sometimes even without words. You look at a piece of art, and it tells a story, evokes emotion, sparks imagination. So while the worlds are very different, being exposed to that kind of creativity and storytelling is definitely enriching.

Your successes are well documented, but could you talk about one significant failure that had a real impact on you?

I’ve had so many failures that it’s hard to say which one was the biggest. But what I can tell you is that you learn far more from failures than you do from successes.

People tend to agonise over their failures, forgetting that most other people usually remember the times you succeeded. For example, when I look back at my eight years at Google, we failed more often than we succeeded. But people only remember the successes. There were many more products and initiatives that didn’t work than the ones that did. And that’s an important part of building and experimenting — you have to be willing to swing for the fences, take the shot, and take risks, knowing that the probability of failure is often higher than the probability of success.

Do you think about your legacy: about how you’d like to be remembered?

That’s not something I really think about. I wake up every day just grateful to be alive, because there will eventually be a day when I’m not. So my focus is simply on making the most of each day and giving it my best.

I try not to spend too much time looking back at the past. Of course, there are things we care deeply about, like helping India become the most innovative nation in the world, and ensuring that Peak XV continues to support the next generation of extraordinary founders and companies.

But ultimately, it comes down to showing up every day, doing your best, loving the work, and staying grateful.