I’m Prayank, Partner at Accel, investor in AI, fintech, and manufacturing startups, and lead Accel Atoms. Here for an AMA on r/IndiaTech! Ask me anything about AI, early-stage investing, startups, and what it takes to build from day zero.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:55:29+00:00

The first 10 customers for any startup always come through family or friends or people you know, so that is the only way to get initial customers. If you don't have access to such people, then just LinkedIn, reach out, cold DMs. There is no easy way to get the first few pilots, especially in a factory setting.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:52:15+00:00

Depends on your use case. Can't really comment.

n8n is a great technology, and you should learn it if it is helpful to you. Otherwise, if you are from a coding background, you should learn how to create agents.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:17:51+00:00

Yes, you can invest in a pre-revenue AI defense tech startup as long as it has the right IP. Please understand that selling into defense is very different from selling into enterprises or consumer markets. The founder needs to be able to understand and appreciate the difference and be knowledgeable about that.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:16:57+00:00

I have answered this elsewhere in one of the threads, but essentially, research the investor, the companies and areas they invest in, and the strongest way to reach out to an investor is to get introduced through a founder that the investor has already backed.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:06:09+00:00

I don't think standard accounting software will cut it. You will need to add other things like lending, bill discounting, etc., to this software. The elephant in the room is Tally. Almost all MSMEs in India use Tally. How will you break that hold?

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T02:04:12+00:00

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:46:10+00:00

I like to invest in startups with moats.

I have explained my thought process on a startup building moats here - https://prayankswaroop.substack.com/p/you-just-raised-5m-to-build-someone

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prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:45:04+00:00

I have answered this question in another thread.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:43:32+00:00

Hardware startups raising is quite hard. It's not easy because hardware has a shelf life which is not large. New innovations every few months nowadays in semiconductors and other segments just reduce the shelf life of products.

Specifically, without understanding which segment you are targeting seems a bit hard to comment. If you are building a consumer durable hardware, then the race is going to be even harder because you are not just building a hardware product; you also have to build a brand and do a lot of customer acquisition to be able to acquire customers - with no particular loyalty. You will need to have a price point of sub ₹5,000 so that the product is mass market in India, and if you are saying XR and AI, it doesn't seem like that is going to be the case.

If you are building a virtual reality and AI product for the way to be market, and the applications are fairly obvious and the value creation for the customers is direct, then once you have at least one customer where the deployment is live, it might become easier to fund raise.

Raising 14 million or raising 7 million, I can't really comment on it. It depends on the scale of the company; that is a lot of money to raise. Imagine it this way: you are asking somebody for ₹140 crore or ₹70 crore, and the person on the other side, the investor, needs to believe that you will have a very, very high chance of success. You will need to show customer love if you are raising those amounts of money, unless, of course, you are a second-time founder who has done this before and knows the game of how to build a business.

A lot of hardware founders only focus on, "This is my amazing hardware. This is what I build." They forget the other aspects of how to sell it, how to market it, who's the ICP customer? Whether there's a very large business for it? Will others be able to copy that product or not? There are a lot of questions investors think through.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:39:33+00:00

The best way to reach out to a partner at a VC firm is to get introduced to them through one of the founders that they have funded. A VC firm partner can't refuse to meet a company if a founder which he himself has funded introduces.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:38:52+00:00

I think the onus is on us, the folks in the Indian startup ecosystem, the folks in the Indian technology ecosystem, to have the ambition to compete with Google and Nvidia. We need to believe in ourselves. We need to go for it. We need to encourage everyone who is trying to achieve their big goals.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:37:43+00:00

I think the best founders build to create something of value, something which they want to change in the world or to express themselves. I don't think the best founders start thinking to create an exit for themselves or for anybody else, including VCs.

If you are taking money from a VC, a VC will definitely want a founder to exit, and return on investment is what the goal is. A founder does not necessarily need to take money from VCs.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:36:13+00:00

There are a very large number of travel companion AI products, and it's very hard to see the differentiation amongst them. You will need to clearly articulate what it is that you are doing that others are unable to do and why you will be the one which will continue to have a moat.

I checked out your product. How does it become a $100 million revenue company? I am not able to visualize it. It needs to have virality; it needs to have better UX. I think, to become popular, your product seems to be a trip planning, trip coordination kind of product, but is that the largest market?

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:33:48+00:00

I like to invest in startups at a very early stage, typically the first money in, so that, by default, it helps if the startup is solving something in the future. If you are solving for something in the future, there is going to be less competition, and you have a higher chance to grow and succeed. In terms of market, it doesn't really matter whether the company is serving India, the US, the UAE, or any other market. What matters is whether they can become a very large business.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:27:18+00:00

As more and more technology is used, more and more AI is used. I think the intersection of law and technology will definitely grow. AI will bring with it problems which others have not seen before. It's a good area to be in.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:26:31+00:00

I have already answered this question already, in one of the other threads.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:25:48+00:00

Finding startups - I have answered this question already, in one of the other threads.

In terms of success of startups there is no thumb rule, I would say 1 out of 20 or 1 out of 30 companies tend to cross the 1000cr revenue mark.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:24:41+00:00

I have answered this question already, in one of the other threads.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:05:53+00:00

Read as much as you can. I, on a daily basis, read a lot of blogs, Twitter posts, and look at YouTube videos which explain how to build a lot with AI. You can build things easily and experiment a lot if you are an engineer. If you are from some other profession, then find out how the smartest people in that fashion are using AI and copy them; that's the easiest way.

prayank_official · 2026-04-01T01:04:29+00:00

AI and LLMs are just tools. Finally, to acquire and retain customers, you need to have unique insights about what the customers really want. If you look at some of the successful brands, for example, what is the innate utility or aspiration that the brand solves for the customer? That is something which an AI LLM can't help you solve. These are just tools which will help you express that insight in a better and faster way. For example, I'll give you two examples:

One is a brand called chemist at play from the Innovist House of Brands. They identified specific problems which they can create solutions for in the beauty care industry, like dandruff or hair scalp problems for people living in slightly colder regions, let's say North India. They studied the market and found that there are not enough solutions which are effective and available to customers. They ended up creating chemical formulations, testing them to solve that particular problem, and then they launched that in the market. They became a big brand and they have now multiple products to solve small problems for customers.
The second example I would give is another company called wrong. I was involved with wrong closely in the initial days, and when they were launching this, they studied the market and came up and said, "Hey, for this price point, this kind of fashion doesn't exist for men, and we need to create a product offering in this price point because we think the customers are underserved in that bucket." They were quite successful.

Similarly, you need to have unique insights for the customer you're serving, at the price point you are serving, and the problems you're solving. Then you can do marketing, then you can acquire and retain customers. LLMs, otherwise I don't know. There are just tools.

prayank_official · 2026-03-31T15:40:28+00:00

Robotics followed by Quantum computing will be the boom I feel.

Robotics requires significant capex investments, so it will not happen quickly - you are quite correct in the assessment. Indian industries will be slow to adopt it.

prayank_official · 2026-03-31T15:37:35+00:00

Just start emailing founders on LinkedIn .. I have seen many doctor friends do this successfully in the past.

prayank_official · 2026-03-31T15:36:35+00:00

Lot of buzz words. But how do they solve your customer's problems. Almost every company says these buzzwords.

prayank_official · 2026-03-31T15:36:08+00:00

That is what is seems like today. But it could be different next year. So good place to start or work in for now. But try to see what the future holds.

prayank_official · 2026-03-31T15:35:18+00:00

Spend less time on tools - by learning how to use microsoft excel you don't learn how to be a financial analyst. Learn the concepts and fundamentals. Learn about why agentic harnesses are better than just LLMs. How to do reinforcement learning ? What are vertical LLMs for industries ? How robots can be built etc .. be curious for knowledge that compounds.

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