AI & Software

From tools to outcomes.

Builders aren't selling AI tools to existing institutions anymore, they’ve shifted their sights to AI-native institutions. Law firms, healthcare companies, services designed from the ground up with AI as the operating layer. Advantage is moving from interfaces to workflows, operations, and decision-making. India's edge here is real: reliability, orchestration, compliance, and human-AI handoffs are precisely the kinds of complex, mission-critical problems Indian founders and teams have spent two decades operationalising. We back the founders taking responsibility for the outcome, not just the product.‍

Building software or AI for the world?
Write to us at namaste@z47.com.‍

Vijay Rayapati

Chetan Reddy

Ravi Dodda

Sharad Sanghi

Arvind Parthiban

Deepanshu Arora

Shashank Kumar

Bhavish Agarwal

Divyaanshu Makkar

The Software & AI Investment Team

Operators, and investors who've shipped and scaled global software companies.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Managing Director

Get to know us better

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Anthropic hosted their first Dev Day in Bangalore this week and announced a physical presence in the city. We're now one of their most important geographies. The entire day was builder-led and builder-focused — with Dario Amodei (CEO), Rahul Patil (CTO), and Irina Ghose (India head) on stage, sharing what the year's focus is and how builders in India can build on top of that.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

At the NDTV Ind.AI Summit, I framed India’s AI opportunity in two big buckets.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Wrapped up the AI Impact Summit with a small breakfast with founders + the OpenAI team. Marc Manara and Thomas Jeng gave us some dope on releases and improvements we can expect this year. We heard from a lot of founders that you'd like more technical workshops/ office hour style sessions to happen. Thomas and I will experiment with a few of these sessions in Bangalore soon.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

Few institutions have shaped a country’s financial system globally, as steadily and thoughtfully as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) We recently had the privilege of hosting Mr. Vasudevan P (Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India) for a closed-door “AI in Fintech roundtable” with a select group of AI-first fintech founders.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Kicked off our new hiking series in the Bay today. It's always a fun time getting the Z47 and DeVC bunch together! We're going to run these monthly. Each hike pairs founders with a different expert to dig into a topic like pricing, AEO, growth playbooks, positioning, and more. Our resident trail guide Sandeep is curating the series and picking the guests. DM him if you want in.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

Srikrishnan, Vignesh, Deepak and the Rocketlane team saw early what the market is only now catching up to, that professional services were always critical, but even more so to make AI work at enterprise scale.

Rajinder Balaraman

Managing Director at Z47

We get this question a lot from founders and friends — "what are you seeing these days?". It's one of those questions where you go - where do I even begin? So you shrug and say everything 😊

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

95% of Indian enterprises (in our survey) are using AI. 1 in 5 can't quantify a single rupee of ROI. Over the last three months, we partnered with OpenAI and Zinnov to study how 100+ Indian enterprises are actually adopting AI and whether they're becoming "AI native"

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

95% of Indian enterprises have adopted AI. About half are getting real value from it. 💥 Today, Z47 and OpenAI are launching 'The India AI Edge' report, powered by Zinnov.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Sharing ~170 companies building some of the best AI products today. We featured this landscape in the India AI Edge report by Z47 and OpenAI. $1.25B in funding went into Indian AI companies last year, and most of it in early stage rounds.

Rajinder Balaraman

Managing Director @ Z47

How many markets can truly grow 40X in a matter of years ? AI infrastructure in India looks like one of them. If you want to understand how India's AI ecosystem is being rebuilt from the ground up, then tune into this conversation with one of India's OG tech founders Sharad Sanghi, founder of Neysa and previously founder of Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Communications Company). Fresh of a major fundraise, Sharad Sanghi and the Neysa team are rapidly emerging as an alternative to global hyperscalers. More power to Indian founders building in AI - a clear national imperative.

Founder & Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Every founder needs a curriculum that is beyond MBA textbooks and frameworks. Spotify was kind enough to ask me to curate their 'Unlock Your Startup Dreams playlist' and these are my must-listen picks.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Anthropic hosted their first Dev Day in Bangalore this week and announced a physical presence in the city. We're now one of their most important geographies. The entire day was builder-led and builder-focused...

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

At the NDTV Ind.AI Summit, I framed India’s AI opportunity in two big buckets. 𝐁𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝟏: 𝐃𝐏𝐈ᴬᴵ India has already built one of the most sophisticated Digital Public Infrastructure stacks in the world - identity, payments, data rails with consent. No one else in the world has that foundation.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Wrapped up the AI Impact Summit with a small breakfast with founders + the OpenAI team. Marc Manara and Thomas Jeng gave us some dope on releases and improvements we can expect this year.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

Few institutions have shaped a country’s financial system globally, as steadily and thoughtfully as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) We recently had the privilege of hosting Mr. Vasudevan P (Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India) for a closed-door “AI in Fintech roundtable” with a select group of AI-first fintech founders.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

2nd AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Kicked off our new hiking series in the Bay today. It's always a fun time getting the Z47 and DeVC bunch together! We're going to run these monthly. Each hike pairs founders with a different expert to dig into a topic like pricing

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

Srikrishnan, Vignesh, Deepak and the Rocketlane team saw early what the market is only now catching up to, that professional services were always critical, but even more so to make AI work at enterprise scale.

Rajinder Balaraman

Managing Director at Z47

We get this question a lot from founders and friends — "what are you seeing these days?". It's one of those questions where you go - where do I even begin? So you shrug and say everything 😊 But reading about Shohei Ohtani and the Harada Method got us thinking differently.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

95% of Indian enterprises (in our survey) are using AI. 1 in 5 can't quantify a single rupee of ROI. Over the last three months, we partnered with OpenAI and Zinnov to study how 100+ Indian enterprises are actually adopting AI and whether they're becoming "AI native"

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

95% of Indian enterprises have adopted AI. About half are getting real value from it. 💥 Today, Z47 and OpenAI are launching 'The India AI Edge' report, powered by Zinnov. It came out of 3 months in conversations with 100+ CXOs across India to understand the gap

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

AI & Software Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Sharing ~170 companies building some of the best AI products today. We featured this landscape in the India AI Edge report by Z47 and OpenAI. $1.25B in funding went into Indian AI companies last year, and most of it in early stage rounds.

Rajinder Balaraman

Managing Director @ Z47

How many markets can truly grow 40X in a matter of years? AI infrastructure in India looks like one of them. If you want to understand how India's AI ecosystem is being rebuilt from the ground up...

Founder & Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Every founder needs a curriculum that is beyond MBA textbooks and frameworks. Spotify was kind enough to ask me to curate their 'Unlock Your Startup Dreams playlist' and these are my must-listen picks.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

Yesterday, the day started with 100+ CTOs and AI builders coming together for our CTO workshop with OpenAI. Wulfie, Nikunj, and Thomas walked us through implementation patterns and best practices with Agent Builder, GPT-5 and the Realtime API. We kicked things off with one simple idea: India’s AI story is entering its slingshot moment. Four drivers:

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Startup CTOs, OpenAI engineers, and the Z47 + DeVC team came together this week for a hands-on technical workshop. Wulfie, Thomas, Nikunj and the OpenAI solutions team spent the morning deep-diving into implementation patterns and debugging challenges across Agent Builder, the Realtime API, and GPT-5.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

I had a blast bringing this together with the OpenAI team! As India’s AI story gains momentum, we hosted a hands-on CTO Workshop in collaboration with OpenAI. The working session brought together over 90 tech leaders for a dive deep into implementation patterns and production challenges guided by Thomas Jeng, Nikunj Handa, and Wulfie Bain from the OpenAI team.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Anthropic hosted their first Dev Day in Bangalore this week and announced a physical presence in the city. We're now one of their most important geographies. The entire day was builder-led and builder-focused — with Dario Amodei (CEO), Rahul Patil (CTO), and Irina Ghose (India head) on stage, sharing what the year's focus is and how builders in India can build on top of that.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most talented AI founders in the ecosystem. With ZAlpha around the corner, I’m excited to introduce our portfolio companies that are building some of today’s most sought-after AI products.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Three years ago, being bullish on AI infrastructure for India felt… a little contrarian. Now it feels obvious. Neysa has quietly become one of the backbones of India’s AI ecosystem, and we’ve been lucky to be on the journey as early investors. It’s been genuinely fun to watch how much the ecosystem has leveled up in ~3 years and to see the role Neysa has played in enabling that shift.

Vikram Vaidyanathan

Investor, Managing Director at Z47

On 18th Feb, I’ll be speaking at the NDTV Ind.ai Summit (with Startup Policy Forum) on “Investing in an AI-led era” alongside Ashutosh Sharma, Aakrit Vaish, Manav Garg and Harshjit Sethi. A timely theme as capital, compute, policy and product innovation begin to align around India’s AI moment.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Wrapped up the AI Impact Summit with a small breakfast with founders + the OpenAI team. Marc Manara and Thomas Jeng gave us some dope on releases and improvements we can expect this year. We heard from a lot of founders that you'd like more technical workshops/ office hour style sessions to happen. Thomas and I will experiment with a few of these sessions in Bangalore soon.

Ashwin Kannan Pandian

Software & AI Investor @ Z47 | Matrix Partners

Next week, we’re hosting a technical office hours with OpenAI’s engg + solutions team This has been a recurring ask from builders across the last few events Thomas, Rahul and I have hosted.. so we figured we’d run the first session in Bangalore Pls sign up if you’re building with OAI and have a bottleneck, or just want best practices. We’ll work through things like agents + tool calling, model selection/tradeoffs, RAG, evals & monitoring, reliability and latency optimization. P.S. For those who DM’d on my last post, if you shared your email, then this should already be on your calendar Z47 Rahul Mathur Vikram Vaidyanathan | Arjun Sun

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