SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

We’re in the early innings of AI, and the playbook for building companies is already changing. In this episode of SeedToScale, Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel, sits down with Jason Graefe, CVP of Microsoft’s AI Partner Catalyst Team, to unpack what’s actually changing in the AI era. From building products to winning enterprise customers, the playbook is being rewritten in real time. Jason brings...

In this episode of PitchCraft, Ixigo MD and Group CEO Aloke Bajpai joins early investor Shailesh Lakhani to revisit the company’s 2016 Series B deck, a moment that captured Ixigo at an inflection point in India’s evolving travel market. The conversation traces how Ixigo moved beyond being a travel meta-search engine by focusing relentlessly on solving customer pain points across flights, trains, a...

Founders today are building in an environment shaped by constant technological shifts and evolving team dynamics. In this episode, Gokul Rajaram, Partner at Marathon Management Partners and early backer of companies like CRED, Figma, Curefit, and Postman, shares how he thinks about building startups that endure. Drawing on his experience as a product leader, investor, and board member, Gokul refle...

Behind every funding decision lies hours of evaluation founders never get to witness. This episode of SeedToScale offers a rare backstage pass into the room where ideas are dissected, and where a simple yes or no is anything but simple. Seasoned investors, Mukul Arora, Co-Managing Partner at Elevation Capital, and Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV, sit for a discussion with Anand Daniel,...

“Founders need to stop assuming VCs are Excel junkies.” In this episode of PitchCraft, Pratik Agarwal, Partner at Accel, breaks down how investors really evaluate startups today. We’re no longer in a copy-paste playbook era. Founders are building unfamiliar ideas across AI, consumer, SaaS, fintech, and deep tech and investors are comparing radically different businesses side by side. In that world...

Doctor visits are short. Health journeys are long. In this episode, Anuruddh Mishra, Founder & CEO of August AI, talks about building an AI-led health companion designed to support patients beyond brief clinical interactions. He shares how August is built to retain personal health context over time, stay available when questions come up, and help people make sense of scattered medical information...

Everyone’s talking about generative AI. Few talk about industrial AI: where the data meets the factory floor. In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Vipin Raghavan, Co-founder & CEO, Haber, explains how Haber is using AI to close the loop between lab and line, turning process data into real-time chemistry control and measurable profit impact. From automating dosing systems to building trust th...

Everyone’s talking about AI models. Few talk about the data that moves them forward. In this episode of Decoding AI, Jonathan Siddharth, Founder & CEO, Turing, explains how Turing evolved from a global developer platform into a research accelerator, fueling the world’s top labs and enterprises with bespoke, interdisciplinary training data. From RL gyms to post-training pipelines, Turing is enginee...

The next big shift in AI isn’t about models getting smarter, it’s about how we work. In this episode of Decoding AI, Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer for AI Experiences at Microsoft, shares how AI is transforming the workplace from tools that assist us to teammates that collaborate with us. Aparna draws from over two decades of product building. From Akamai’s internet backbone to Google...

Every metal behaves predictably, but carbon fiber doesn’t. Its strength depends on how every fiber is laid, making it one of the hardest materials to automate. That’s where Dhinesh Kanagaraj, Founder & CEO, Fabheads, comes in. Their breakthrough “adaptive tow placement” technology lets machines think like craftsmen, achieving fiber-level control at industrial speed. With software-driven automation...

For decades, India’s two-wheeler industry perfected manufacturing at scale, but not innovation. Then came Ather Energy. Tarun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, shares how Ather built every layer of the EV stack, from battery architecture to charging infrastructure, entirely from scratch. From a lab at IIT Madras to India’s one of the largest electric two-wheeler brands, Ather’s story is one of conviction o...

What if a rocket engine could be 3D-printed in a single shot? What if a launch pad could move wherever permission is granted? That’s exactly what AgniKul is building. In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder & CEO of AgniKul, shares how the team is reimagining rocket design and manufacturing from the ground up. From single-piece 3D-printed rocket engines to mobil...

In this episode of PitchCraft Season 2, Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder and CEO of BlueStone and Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, revisit the 33-page idea-stage deck that launched one of India’s most enduring jewelry brands. Back in 2011, BlueStone didn’t even have a website or sales to show. It only had a conviction that India’s jewelry market was ripe for disruption. Gaurav reflects on the ch...

In this episode of PitchCraft Season 2, Chandra Srikanth sits down with Harshil Mathur, Co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, and Vikram Vaidyanathan of Z47 to unpack the pitch deck that launched one of India’s most iconic fintech companies. Harshil looks back on Razorpay’s early days in 2014, when he and Co-founder Shashank Kumar were just two engineers trying to accept payments for a side project, onl...

In the debut episode of PitchCraft's Season 2, Chandra Srikanth speaks to Sriharsha Majety, Co-Founder and CEO of Swiggy, and Accel's Anand Daniel as they deconstruct the company's first pitch deck that laid the foundation for one of India's most iconic consumer tech companies. Harsha reflects on Swiggy’s early days in 2014, when the team put together a function-first deck built on a single insigh...

Contracts are the backbone of every business, every dollar in or out is tied to one. Yet, they remain one of the most antiquated, slow, and expensive parts of how companies operate. Legal workflows still rely on copy-paste, track changes, and armies of lawyers billing by the hour. SpotDraft is rewriting this story. By treating contracts as the hardest language problem for AI, one that demands accu...

India today stands at the cusp of a new wave in advanced manufacturing. With global supply chains shifting, demand for cost-effective innovation rising, and deep scientific talent at home, the country has a chance to create the building blocks of tomorrow’s industries. Specialty chemicals, critical to pharmaceuticals, agro, electronics, and more, are one such frontier. Scimplify is leading this sh...

India today stands at a once-in-a-generation moment to establish itself as a global leader in advanced manufacturing. With deep-tech innovation, shifting global supply chains, and a rising domestic market that demands scale and affordability, the country has the chance to build world-class products, not just for India but for the world. Aerospace, EVs, semiconductors, and clean energy are just a f...

Every economic superpower has been built on the backbone of manufacturing. Today, with global supply chains being rewritten and the world moving from cost to precision, resilience, and IP, India stands at a rare window of opportunity. Advanced manufacturing is no longer our quiet revolution. Decoding Manufacturing brings you the voices of India’s boldest builders, decoding what it takes to reimagi...

AI is rewriting the rules of education, turning personalized tutoring from a privilege of the few into a possibility for every student, regardless of where they live or what they can afford. For millions of students in India’s tier-2 and tier-3 towns, the barrier to quality learning has long been financial and geographic. Arivihan is breaking that barrier. In this episode of Decoding AI, Accel’s A...

It’s almost a consensus view that India can’t build its AI future on borrowed code. It needs infrastructure rooted in Indian languages, accents, and real-world use cases. At the heart of this mission is AI4Bharat, an open-source initiative building cutting-edge AI models for all 22 official Indian languages. In this episode of Decoding AI, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, sits down with Professo...

The fastest solution is not always the smartest one. Even the world’s fastest inference engine can’t win on speed alone. That’s why Amritanshu Jain, Co-Founder & CEO of Simplismart, emphasizes adaptability as the true goal. For enterprises, it’s not just about running models at lightning pace, but balancing cost efficiency, speed of execution, and scalability across dynamic environments. In a worl...

What if your entire brand could run on autopilot? Sai Krishna, Co-founder, ShopOS, shares how AI agents will redefine the way brand-owners build, market, and scale businesses. From smarter catalogs and campaigns to fully automated brand orchestration, he explains why AI is the perfect draft engine, giving founders a head start on every creative and operational task. Sai breaks down the rise of amb...

Integrations are the hidden bottleneck in modern engineering slowing teams down, draining time, and killing creativity. What if AI could automate that completely? Soham Ganatra, Co-founder & CEO, Composio, shares how his team built one of the largest hosted MCP platforms, where AI coding agents autonomously build and manage integrations end-to-end. From early experiments with LLMs to tackling agen...

How fast can AI really talk back? For Smallest.ai, the answer is 45 milliseconds. In this episode, Akshat Mandloi, Co-founder, breaks down how they built one of the fastest and most efficient voice AI engines, proving that systems thinking, not scale, wins in the real world. He shares insights on continuous retraining, evolving architectures, and the hidden engineering layers that make Smallest AI...