India Startup Week 2026 Bengaluru Concludes; Eyes Hyderabad Next and Mauritius in 2027

One of the highlights was a keynote by Ashwinder Singh, Vice Chairman & CEO of BCD Group and Chairman of CII Real Estate, who spoke on India's trillion-dollar opportunity and urged founders to look beyond funding cycles to build scalable, globally impactful companies.

In a session that stood out, Dr. A. Velumani, Creator of Thyrocare, AVMLabs & AVMSmiles, moved away from a conventional business lecture to share lessons on purpose, resilience, and simplicity in entrepreneurship.

Other key voices included Ramani Iyer, Co-founder of Justdial and Founder of ElephantGod Accelerator and Chief Mentor of ISW; the Advisory Board of ISW — Vineet Arora, Managing Partner, Kairos Capital; Shyam Kumar, GM, DoubleTree by Hilton; Dharmendra RS, COO, ICON Hotels India — along with investors and ecosystem leaders such as Biren Parekh, Thyagu Valliappa, MKHH Jilani, Sandeep Gupta, Abhinav Sharma, Sudeep Ambare, Aiyappa Somayanda, Mohit Arora, Gantavya Kshatree, Rohan Bajaj, Rupa Popat, Cherish Tota, Sri Ramakrishnan, and Debopriya Chakroborty. Discussions ranged from AI adoption and fundraising to team building and customer acquisition.

A dedicated women's leadership panel featuring Revathi Kamath, Founder of Calyx; Menaka Sulladmath, MD, BFC Global; and Heena Arora Agarwal, Founder, Fundvice, focused on strengthening networks for women entrepreneurs.

On the capital front, ISW Fund Connect brought together 18 angel investors and fund representatives for focused one-on-one interactions with startups, moving beyond stage conversations to actual fundraising dialogues.

An international development emerged with Mr. Joyadeep Beeharry, Chairman, State Informatics Ltd, Mauritius, and Dr. Parmesh Pallanee, MD, announcing exploratory talks to take India Startup Week to Mauritius in 2027 — a move aimed at opening global market access for Indian startups.

The edition also brought an inner dimension with Sri Krishna Chaitanya Swami of ISKCON speaking on clarity, purpose, and values in the founder journey.

The event closed with the ISW Awards 2026, with over 32 winners felicitated across technology, mobility, consumer, and social impact categories. Chief Guest Mohammed Haris Nalapad, former KYCC Youth Congress leader, and Brand Ambassador Ragini Dwivedi addressed the gathering, with Nalapad pledging support for greater engagement from the Government of Karnataka.

Organised by founders Ujjwal Mukhia, Vikram Shah, Rakesh Meghani, Dixit Mehta, and Kashish Mukhia, Creative Director, ISW 2026 will now move to Hyderabad in November 2026 before expanding to other cities.