Also in the letter:
■ Zerodha’s plans for Coin
■ Hiring reset in consumer startups
■ MeitY on content blocking
Large AI firms hoovering maximum funding, not enough for smaller startups: Y Combinator’s Ankit Gupta
Money in AI is getting top-heavy. Giant labs are soaking up mega cheques, while young builders fight for limited capital, Y Combinator’s Ankit Gupta told us in an interview.
Why it matters: Gupta said early AI sit on “an insane number of possibilities,” yet capital is flowing mostly into late-stage names raising blockbuster rounds.
YC’s India push: The accelerator is doubling down on India with its first Startup School in Bengaluru. The programme drew over 25,000 applications for 2,000 seats. YC is also stepping up outreach at IIT Delhi to lock in top engineering talent early.
On valuations: Gupta brushed away fears of an AI bubble. In his view, growth in the space looks unrealistic only until real-world adoption kicks in and revenue lines catch up.
Also Read: From UP to Y Combinator: The rise & rise of Harshita Arora
India’s opportunity: While the US and China still dominate frontier AI, Gupta said India has the talent and market scale to compete — provided early-stage capital and ecosystem support improve.
Listen in | ET Morning Brief: Ankit Gupta, general partner at Y Combinator
Indian IT still alive & kicking; companies need us to access AI gains: TCS CEO
Days after reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter FY26 results, TCS CEO K Krithivasan dismissed fears of a decline in traditional IT services, arguing in an interview with us that the sector has repeatedly adapted to disruption.
Not the end yet: “We have been writing its obituary every 10 years, but I think Indian IT services have proven to be very resilient,” Krithivasan said. “Not because of cost arbitrage, but because of the depth of skill sets.”
He added that enterprises will continue to rely on firms like TCS to translate AI investments into real business gains.
Also Read: TCS Q4 FY26: Attrition rises to 13.7%; 2,356 employees added during the quarter
FY27 outlook: TCS leadership is stepping into FY27 with “a lot of confidence and optimism” even as global geopolitical risk stays elevated, especially in West Asia, Krithivasan said.
In its latest results, TCS reported its highest-ever total contract value (TCV), with three large deals in the March quarter and five for the year. TCV stood at $40.7 billion in FY26 and $12 billion in Q4.
Also Read: TCS makes only 25k fresher offers this fiscal, more hires dependent on demand scenario: Official
Disruption or opportunity? Chief operating officer Aarthi Subramanian said systems such as Claude Cowork and Claude Mythos could disrupt traditional IT services, but TCS is seeing a “big opportunity” in these developments.
GenAI has unlocked a significant opportunity in legacy modernisation, particularly for large, decades-old systems such as mainframes.
Also Read: TCS rides AI demand; mega deals power Q4 results
Zerodha turns its ‘Coin’ into a passive wealth management hub
Zerodha is recasting its mutual fund platform Coin into a full-stack passive wealth destination.
Driving the news: Coin users can now park money across direct mutual funds, NPS (National Pension Scheme), and insurance, and most recently, fixed deposits offered through tie-ups with small finance banks.
“Think of Coin as a platform where people put money they don’t want to manage actively, mutual funds, NPS, insurance and now with fixed deposits, we have launched almost everything we had in mind,” said Neelesh Verma, associate vice president at Zerodha. He heads the firm’s mutual funds, NPS, and fixed-income products.
User base:
- Coin currently has about 2.7 million to 3 million active users, with mutual fund assets of roughly Rs 1.8 lakh crore to Rs 1.9 lakh crore and around six million active SIPs.
- Zerodha is also shifting some active products, such as government securities, to its broking platform Kite, and plans to add mutual funds there as well.
Tell me more: The firm is also exploring bond distribution, though the exact approach is still being worked out. Zerodha said it remains committed to its direct-investing philosophy, even as other platforms move into regular funds and wider wealth offerings.
Consumer company CTOs want engineers who can think, not just code
As consumer internet brands double down on AI, their hiring playbook is changing fast. Companies such as Meesho, Ixigo, Noise and Razorpay are looking beyond traditional coders. They now want engineers who can design systems, navigate ambiguity and work shoulder to shoulder with smart tools.
What’s changing: The shift is visible in both hiring philosophy and demand. Instead of focusing on software frameworks or programming languages, CTOs and founders said they evaluate candidates based on how they build and customise their coding environments.
What the numbers say: Staffing firm CIEL HR estimates a 210% rise in engineering hiring between 2024 and 2025, with growing demand for AI/ML specialists, DevOps engineers and solution architects. Data and analytics roles now account for over half of hiring demand.
The gaps: However, the talent gap persists; companies say many candidates are familiar with AI tools but lack depth in understanding how they work, making high-quality hiring a challenge.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
MeitY wants to include users, social firms in content-blocking hearings: To give a clear opportunity to online users to argue their case when the government blocks content posted by them, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has proposed to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) to include both users and internet intermediaries in the interdepartmental committee (IDC) hearings, officials told us.
Rapid fashion companies dress to kill: A new crop of venture-backed startups is testing the quick-commerce playbook in fashion, delivering clothing, footwear and accessories in under an hour in metro cities, but high cash burn and uncertain demand are raising questions about the model’s scalability.
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ Anthropic’s Mythos will force a cybersecurity reckoning—just not the one you think (Wired)
■ Anthropic closes in on OpenAI as US business use surges (FT)
■ Chinese entrepreneurs should go global before they go viral (Rest of World)
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