What does it take to build an enduring company? For Subrata Mitra, partner at the venture capital firm Accel India, one of the most important factors is building a resilient team.
In a fireside chat with Google India country manager Preeti Lobana on July 23, Mitra said that "great companies" are typically built over 8 to 12 years, and it usually takes even longer in India.
"Never have I seen a startup that has gone from start to finish in a unidirectional way. There are road bumps that keep coming up. They could be very frequent or less frequent. But it's the enduring team that actually builds moats around these drops," Mitra said at Google's developer event in Bengaluru.
"So when you are having free-fall type scenarios, how do you course correct, catch the free fall, and start climbing back again? That's probably one of the most important things to keep in mind," he added.
Mitra, an early backer of the e-commerce giant Flipkart, said that startups should also pick a problem they believe will stand the test of time.
"There are a bunch of things happening in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) world, where a lot of the LLMs are getting better, smarter, and faster every hour. So how do you actually sit on top of those if you're not actually building one, which most of us are not? How do you sit on top of those and create solutions that truly affect your end customers?" he said.
Lobana also said that to succeed in a "big way" over a long period of time, especially in the current AI era, it's critical to focus on the big fundamental issues that exist in India.
For instance, she pointed to the shortage of healthcare professionals and inadequate infrastructure in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, as well as in rural areas. Lobana also highlighted areas such as climate change and sustainability.
"Water is increasingly a scarce resource, and I'm sure AI can help us detect leaks and come up with better ways to manage resources. Or even if you think about optimising renewable energy grids," she said.
Lobana further added, "When you think about education in India, there is a massive population of youngsters in this country who speak multiple languages and come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. If we can build solutions that are adaptive and customised to each individual’s context, that will really help us bridge that skilling gap that exists."
When looking at these sectors, she said, it's important for startups to leverage AI along with the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) available in India. "A lot of these DPI solutions are inherently frugal and scalable, and will work beautifully with many other countries. So just grab the dual opportunity of building in India for India, but also for the world," Lobana added.
Read: Google expands data residency efforts in India with local processing of Gemini 2.5 Flash
Cracking the go-to-market code
Mitra said that AI startups building their go-to-market strategy in today’s competitive environment will need to go above and beyond, especially since AI models have access to the entirety of the world's publicly available data.
"How do you get there? It probably has to be in partnership with someone who has access to unique data, usually an enterprise... But as a startup, gaining access to an enterprise is a challenge in itself. To do that, you need to build trust, either through a partner or directly with the enterprise," he said.
Startups should also stay focused on what is the ROI (Return on Investment) that they are delivering to their customer and be flexible while collaborating with enterprises, Mitra said.
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