Bengaluru, July 17, 2025 — India’s startup landscape is on fire—and it’s not just about unicorns anymore. At the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025, recently held in Bengaluru, the spotlight was on “soonicorns”—startups on the brink of unicorn status—accelerating from deeptech breakthroughs to billion-dollar revenue with help from AI and scale.
From Labs to Billions: The AI Edge
According to Tracxn, India now boasts 121 unicorns, with giants like Jumbotail joining the ranks in June. But the underlying action lies with soonicorns—those valued over $100 million or series funding above $40 million who are leveraging AI-first strategies to catapult up the valuation ladder faster than ever.
Programs like IndiaAI Mission are pushing GPU access, cloud layers, and data infrastructure into the ecosystem—allowing startups across finance, agri, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare to bake AI into their products from day one.
Blueprint from the Summit
At the one-day Summit scheduled for August 22, 2025, over 50 speakers—including founders, VCs, and technologists—are expected to decode the “From Research Labs to Revenue Models” playbook. Key panels include:
- AI Investments: Hype vs Disruption
- The Billion-Dollar AI Blueprint
- From Pilot to Product-Market Fit
- Ethics in AI: Guardrails for Growth
- Building Indian LLMs: Can India Build Its Own ChatGPT?
A marquee fireside chat with InMobi’s Mohit Saxena will explore native AI stacks, and deeptech soonicorns like Sarvam AI and Krutrim will share how they’re shaping Indic-first AI models.
Why Now Is the Moment
India ranks third globally in unicorn count (behind the US and China) and is rapidly building its own genAI and vernacular AI capabilities. Soonicorns are turning deeptech into market returns by riding this national wave—while investors chase real disruption.
Follow StartupStoryIndia as we decode the future—where AI, ambition, and Bharat’s untapped potential intersect.
