India No Longer a Decade Behind Silicon Valley in AI, Says Elevation Capital’s Krishna Mehra
India has significantly narrowed the gap with Silicon Valley in artificial intelligence, and is no longer trailing by a decade, according to Krishna Mehra, AI partner at Elevation Capital. Speaking in San Francisco, Mehra said Indian founders today are operating much closer to the global AI frontier and should aim to build category-defining companies rather than settling for secondary positions.
“In the SaaS days, San Francisco was maybe 10-plus years ahead,” Mehra said. “Now we’ve narrowed the gap significantly. Maybe India is six months to a year behind at most.” He described the shift as one of the most important changes in India’s technology ecosystem over the past decade.
Mehra, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and former co-founder of Capillary Technologies and food-tech startup Taro, joined Elevation Capital in 2024 to strengthen the firm’s India–US investment corridor. He believes the current AI cycle presents a sharper opportunity for Indian founders because products are being rebuilt from “first principles” rather than incrementally improving existing software.
In earlier technology waves, companies could build in India by replicating proven global models and then scale later. With AI, Mehra said, user workflows and product capabilities evolve rapidly, often changing every few months. This makes early feedback from global customers critical. “Products can be rethought completely,” he said, contrasting AI-native software with earlier transitions such as on-premise to cloud computing.
This shift is also influencing where founders choose to operate. While India continues to offer deep technical talent, Mehra said many AI startups are now moving to the US much earlier in their journey, sometimes at the pre-seed stage, to validate ideas and refine their thesis. He pointed to Silicon Valley’s dense ecosystem of AI meetups, developer communities and customer access as a major advantage.
“The talent density here is very high, and feedback loops are extremely fast,” Mehra said, adding that founders often gain direct access to customers and collaborators willing to engage deeply with new ideas.
According to Mehra, India today has stronger fundamentals for building global AI companies than ever before. These include more mature product talent, better understanding of go-to-market strategies, increasingly sophisticated domestic customers, greater availability of risk capital, and higher founder ambition.
“If those ingredients are there, can India build category-defining companies? Absolutely,” he said, emphasising that Indian startups should aim to be “global number one” rather than number two or three players.
Mehra also cautioned that competitive dynamics in AI are evolving quickly. As model providers expand their capabilities, the key question for founders and investors is whether lasting value will sit at the application layer or be absorbed by underlying platforms. The ability to build durable differentiation, he said, will define long-term winners.
Final Thoughts
The AI wave is redefining long-held assumptions about India’s position in global technology. As barriers to entry shrink and innovation cycles accelerate, Indian founders are no longer limited to playing catch-up. The challenge now is ambition and execution — turning proximity to the frontier into globally dominant products. If the ecosystem delivers on its promise, the next generation of AI leaders may emerge from India rather than follow Silicon Valley’s lead.
