Two of the world’s most prominent investors, Accel and Prosus, have joined forces to transform early-stage funding for Indian startups, providing essential venture capital through innovative seed-stage investing that prioritizes LeapTech innovation to solve massive-scale challenges in sectors like AI and the energy transition.

The partnership announced on Monday suggests that US-based venture capital firm Accel and Dutch technology investor Prosus will co-invest in early-stage funding rounds for Indian entrepreneurs from the very first day of their operations.

The collaboration marks Prosus’s first-ever move into formation-stage investing and represents a significant vote of confidence in India’s ability to produce the next generation of technology giants.

The country is home to more than 1.4 billion people and is witnessing the rapid expansion of its digital economy. With over a billion internet users and around 700 million smartphone owners, the country now ranks as the world’s second-largest smartphone market, just behind China.

Under the startup investment partnership, Prosus has committed to match Accel’s investment dollar-for-dollar in each company, with initial checks ranging from $100,000 to $1 million per firm. This means founders can access between $200,000 and $2 million in combined early-stage funding without the usual complications of negotiating with multiple investors.

The arrangement extends Accel’s Atoms X program, which targets explicitly the firms’ “LeapTech” companies—Indian startups working on breakthrough technologies that could transform entire industries.

Why This Partnership Matters for Young Founders

The timing couldn’t be more critical for India’s startup ecosystem. Indian startups raised only $4.8 billion in the first half of 2025, down 25 percent from the previous year. Early-stage funding took a brutal hit, dropping 16 percent to $1.6 billion.

In this challenging environment, having two heavyweight investors committed to backing bold ideas from day zero could make the difference between an ambitious project taking flight or never leaving the ground.

“We feel now the time is right for the Indian startup ecosystem to move from adapting global businesses to creating Indian models that help India leapfrog its journey in becoming a developed country,” said Pratik Agarwal, a partner at Accel.

Rather than simply copying business models from Silicon Valley or China, this startup investment partnership aims to fund companies solving uniquely Indian problems at a massive scale.

What Makes “LeapTech” Different

The startup investment partnership focuses specifically on what Accel calls LeapTech innovation—companies pursuing breakthroughs in product, technology or business models that require years of development before showing results.

These aren’t your typical software startups that can launch an app in three months. Instead, the partnership targets sectors such as advanced manufacturing, energy transition, AI-driven automation, and internet infrastructure—areas where India has the potential to create world-class solutions.

“Startups working on population-scale solutions often struggle to raise sufficient early capital, given their long gestation periods and the risk of heavy dilution before reaching meaningful traction,” said Agarwal.

By providing substantial early-stage funding upfront, the partners hope to give founders enough runway to build breakthrough technologies without repeatedly giving away ownership to stay alive.

The partnership has already backed several promising companies. Arivihan, an AI-powered tutoring platform serving students in tier-two and tier-three cities, recently raised $4.17 million from two investors.

Wiom, which provides affordable internet access starting at just 5 rupees, secured $40 million with both firms participating. These investments showcase the type of LeapTech innovation the partnership aims to accelerate, leveraging technology to serve hundreds of millions of people at radically lower cost.

A First for Global Investor Prosus

For Prosus, this startup investment partnership represents a significant strategic shift. The Amsterdam-headquartered firm has traditionally focused on late-stage investments, backing established companies like food delivery giant Swiggy and e-commerce platform Meesho after they’d already proven their business models.

Its early bet on Chinese tech titan Tencent in 2001—$32 million that grew to be worth hundreds of billions—happened before Prosus even existed as a separate entity.

“This is Prosus’s first collaboration of its kind globally. Accel is a natural partner to join hands with,” said Ashutosh Sharma, head of India ecosystem at Prosus. The move signals that even mega-investors who can write nine-figure checks recognize the need to get involved earlier when backing Indian startups tackling complex, systems-level challenges.

Importantly, Sharma clarified that Prosus isn’t trying to grab equivalent equity stakes in these seed-stage deals. “For us, getting that equity in the first round is not important at all,” he told TechCrunch. “If we can truly identify a Swiggy, a Meesho, an iFood, or a Tencent of tomorrow—today, that is success enough”.

Building India’s Innovation Foundation

The infrastructure is already in place for India to produce breakthrough companies at scale. Government-backed platforms like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which processes billions of digital transactions monthly, and Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric identification system, have created digital rails that let startups reach millions of users quickly.

India’s 700 million smartphone users—the world’s second-largest market after China—provide a massive testing ground for new products and services.

Yet despite these advantages, much of India’s venture capital activity has focused on adapting proven Western business models rather than creating original innovations. The Accel-Prosus startup investment partnership explicitly aims to change that equation by backing founders working on homegrown solutions to India-specific challenges.

“India’s place in the global economy and the geopolitical system is such that India needs to chart and accelerate its path like a self-sovereign, independent, developed country,” Agarwal said.

With artificial intelligence reshaping global competition and supply chains, both investors see an opportunity for India to stake out a leadership position in the next wave of technology—provided its most ambitious founders have patient access, early-stage capital.

What This Means for Entrepreneurs

For entrepreneurs dreaming of starting their own companies, this startup investment partnership offers an important lesson: some of the world’s most sophisticated investors are now willing to back you from day one if you’re working on something genuinely transformative. The key is thinking bigger than just another food delivery app or social media clone.

Accel has already supported more than 40 companies through its Atoms program, with over 30 percent securing follow-on funding, and Accel has led more than half of those subsequent rounds. The addition of Prosus as a committed co-investor makes the proposition even more attractive, potentially smoothing the path to later-stage fundraising when these LeapTech innovation projects are ready to scale.

The partnership comes at a moment when India’s role in the global technology landscape is being hotly debated. While venture capital funding has slowed worldwide, India’s combination of technical talent, massive domestic market and improving digital infrastructure continues to attract long-term believers.

The Accel-Prosus collaboration represents a bet that the next decade won’t just see India producing more startups—it will see Indian startups creating entirely new technology categories that serve billions of people worldwide.

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