As moderator Miloni Bhatt opened the session, she framed the significance of the conversation: “India is not just building companies … It is actually laying down the infrastructure for the next economy.” That framing set the stage for a rich dialogue on the convergences that could shape “India 2.0.”
Rethinking health infrastructure: Bridging the diagnostic divide
The discussion began with healthcare, identified as the foundational layer for resilience. Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Founder & CEO of SigTuple, underscored the critical diagnostic gap: “There are supposedly one lakh plus labs in India, but the number of practising pathologists… would be 10,000 or less. So the question is, who mans the other 90,000?”
SigTuple claims to reimagine this imbalance by digitising pathology, much like radiology has already been digitised. Dastidar explained how AI-powered microscopes can process samples locally, transmit them digitally, and enable central teams of pathologists to validate results faster. The goal is clear: decentralise diagnostics, improve turnaround times, and scale efficiency without compromising accuracy.
On regulatory challenges, he was unequivocal: “AI cannot take the human out of the loop. Anybody who claims that AI can diagnose on its own is probably daydreaming.” By retaining human oversight, SigTuple seeks to balance innovation with trust.
Adarsh Natarajan, Founder & CEO of Aindra, seconded Dastidar’s point, expanding it to a systemic level. “One of the key aspects is that when out-of-pocket expenses go down and insurance coverage rises, the pressure on pricing reduces. That accelerates adoption not just in diagnostics but across healthcare.” He also pointed to the fragmented nature of India’s 100,000 labs, where competition often devolves into price arbitrage at the cost of quality. Standardisation and accreditation, he argued, were as important as insurance reform.
Both leaders agreed decentralisation and systemic nudges—from Ayushman Bharat to NABL accreditation—are essential to bridge India’s diagnostic chasm.
The skilling imperative: Preparing India’s workforce for the AI age
If health is the base layer, people form the lifeblood of India’s growth story. Ujjwal Misra, Director–Corporate at Guvi, highlighted the employability gap: “Seven people out of ten coming out of engineering colleges do not have the professional skill sets required by the industry.”
Guvi’s approach has been to break this cycle by skilling students in vernacular languages, addressing a barrier often overlooked in India’s skilling story. “Since our inception, we have trained around three million plus students in bilingual mode,” Misra noted, pointing to focused courses in artificial intelligence, full-stack development, and UI/UX.
The bigger shift, however, is embedding AI tools into the curriculum itself. Misra emphasised that engineers today must be trained with AI in mind—prompt engineering, automation testing, and AI simulations are now part of Guvi’s programs. Ethical AI practices, from data privacy to intellectual property, are equally critical to prepare adaptable, responsible professionals.
Here, Dastidar added a sharp reminder: just as Zoho trains rural students to become software engineers, “kids can be trained to run diagnostic machines too.” Both leaders converged on the idea that hybrid skills—healthcare plus technology, agriculture plus analytics—will define India’s next wave of workforce readiness.
Building trust in digital finance
Trust was also the theme when the conversation shifted to fintech and digital assets. Satish Mishra, CTO of Pi42, spoke candidly about navigating crypto’s regulatory flux: “Even if I build the best transaction system, but the user is not able to get his money into my system or out of it, that is problematic.”
For Mishra, resilience lies in building abstraction layers that insulate users from volatility while keeping funds within India’s regulated banking system. “It will not happen that a user wakes up and finds the company has lost 40 million tokens. Their money remains safe in the banking system.”
Still, he argued, systemic improvements in KYC, Aadhaar-linked verifications, and mobile number security are prerequisites. Fraud, he warned, remains a bottleneck. Yet, like traditional finance before it, he sees crypto evolving through gradual regulatory scaffolding: “We also need to evolve. It’s just a factor of time.”
Agriculture’s next leap: From water to data
No discussion on India’s economic future is complete without agriculture, which still employs nearly half the workforce. Both CropIn and CultYvate are pioneering models that blend technology with farmer realities.
Prakhyath Hegde, SVP–Engineering at CropIn, outlined the scale: “We have digitised over 9 million farmers and 30 million acres across 102 countries.” Yet adoption, he admitted, is a challenge. His insight was sharp: “It’s not the farmer who has to adopt technology. The technology has to adapt to the farmer.”
From customised vernacular apps to offline-first platforms, CropIn has learned that even minor interface tweaks, such as an icon change, impact adoption. Partnering with Google, the company now layers soil, crop, and climate data into localised AI models, enabling farmers to query insights in simple language.
Mallesh T M, Founder undefined they ask for solutions. “When we went to Punjab, we realised most farmers didn’t have smartphones. So we built advisories around feature phones, SMS, and voice calls. There is no training required for that.”
By aligning with sugar mills and government ethanol programs, CultYvate ensures farmer incentives are clear: lower input costs and higher yields. The water-saving narrative is reframed as a productivity gain, making adoption natural. As Mallesh put it, “We never talk to farmers about water saving. We talk to them about reducing costs and increasing yield.”
Consensus on the theme of convergence
The most compelling moments came when sectors intersected. When asked how AI diagnostics and skilling could converge, Dastidar and Misra both pointed to rural training models and government interventions. Natarajan pushed further, arguing India’s education system must enable multidisciplinarity: “An engineering graduate should probably be able to take humanities or music as a course and still complete their degree. That adaptability is critical when technology changes so fast.”
Similarly, on the question of agritech-fintech convergence, Mishra highlighted blockchain-enabled crop insurance and weather derivatives as “real-world assets” that could democratise financial tools for farmers. Mallesh extended the idea to carbon credits from water-saving practices, where blockchain could ensure measurement integrity. Hegde, too, pointed to how agritech insights are already being used by banks to determine branch expansion and loan suitability.
The convergence theme ran deep: agriculture meets finance, diagnostics meets edtech, and blockchain underpins trust across sectors.
The one big push
As the discussion closed, Bhatt posed a rapid-fire question: one infrastructure investment that could accelerate growth across sectors. The answers revealed both diversity and unity:
- “Network connectivity for remote areas.” – Prakhyath Hegde
- “Asset digitisation.” – Tathagato Rai Dastidar
- “Network and policy relook.” – Adarsh Natarajan
- “More open banking laws.” – Satish Mishra
- “Opening land boundaries in a centralized manner.” – Mallesh T M
- “Professional skilling introduced at Class XI and XII.” – Ujjwal Misra
Each response underscored that while sectoral needs differ, the shared thread is systemic infrastructure—physical, digital, and human.
The road ahead
What made this closed-door format significant was not just the candor of insights but the recognition that India 2.0 will be built at intersections. As Bhatt summed up, “There is space for convergence. There is space where your expertise can build into somebody else’s expertise and maybe give birth to something new.”
From digitised diagnostics to vernacular skilling, from blockchain-backed agriculture to AI-infused financial resilience, the contours of India’s future economy are being sketched today by soonicorns and minicorns alike. Their voices converged on one undeniable truth: resilience in India’s next economy will come not from isolated innovation, but from collaborative infrastructure that binds sectors together.
The ET Soonicorns Summit 2025, India’s largest congregation of soonicorns, returned for its fourth edition to Bengaluru on August 22.
360 ONE is the Presenting Partner of the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025, with Shiv Nadar University as the Ecosystem Partner, Raymond as the Wardrobe Partner, Pi42 as the Gold Partner, Bank of India as the Banking Partner, Tracxn as the Knowledge Partner, and K-Tech Startup Karnataka as the State Partner. The Gifting Partners of the Summit are The Mind & Company, Plum, Clinikally, EM5, and True Elements.