From Investors To Operators: VCs Embrace The Build-It-Yourself Era
W Health Ventures’ managing partner Pankaj Jethwani is not content with just investing. The VC firm’s 2070 Health venture studio arm is instead looking to create businesses from scratch, along with the right partners.
“It’s about how do we solve a particular problem and get to scale fast. And, those are the two guiding principles,” Jethwani told Inc42.
Most venture capital firms identify and invest in startups across stages based on their thesis, but there are other models such as acceleration and incubation that have also remained popular over the past two decades. Given their diverse focus, VC funds, accelerators and incubators all have been successful to varying degrees.
In contrast, venture studios like the one Jethwani is building, have not exactly been part of the Indian startup ecosystem’s success stories. A lot of that is changing as venture capitalists and fund managers are looking to take more control of what they can build, especially in the age of AI.
W Health launching a “company creation fund” stirs curiosity, but it’s not the only venture studio trying to find and build the next big thing.
The likes of Think9, The Foundery, Smile Group, W Health, VenturEdu, HyKr, Fashion Entrepreneur Fund, Antler India, T9L, Biome are all looking to catalyse ideas from conception stage and often with no team in place.
Most of them focus on specific niches, and some have entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) programmes or their own venture studios for which they hire talent directly. But all of this is now being given a bigger fillip by AI.
“AI is something that we refer to as “productivity multiplier”. There have only been a handful of technologies that have had the same impact as AI in the last two centuries — I like to compare it to the motor engine or electricity or physical money,” VenturEdu’s founder Kulmani Rana told us.
Unsurprisingly, in 2026, AI has enabled something of a second wave for venture studios in India, with the likes of Prototyze (founded in 2014), Betaworks and Idealab coming up in the first boom before India’s VC ecosystem hit maturity.
Between 2014 and 2025, more than $24 Bn has been raised by funds for investments in Indian startups, as per Inc42’s historic data.
In 2025, 77 new and refreshed funds were launched, with an aggregate corpus of over $12.1 Bn (about INR 11.20 Lakh Cr), where a majority of 58% of the overall funds were focussed on backing early stage startups, particularly in fintech, consumer brands and tech, and AI startups.
But many investors are preferring a more hands-on approach rather than wait for the right deal or startup to fall under their radar. It has led to the rise of the second wave of venture studios in India.
For Jethwani and others leading venture studios in India, AI is a critical step-change when it comes to investors building their ventures. He said W Health is looking to identify problem statements in the industry and build the design of these companies, most of which operate as platforms.
The venture studio, 2070 Health, offers support and nurtures startups from day one, and even acquires or forms partnerships with existing startups. One example is cancer care platform Everhope Oncology, which was launched by 2070 Health in partnership with Narayana Health, in March 2025, with a capital infusion of $10 Mn.
The central team at 2070 Health undertakes research and development (R&D), venture design, de-risking of these business models and forming the founding team, Jethwani added. Despite no dearth of funds backing startups, Jethwani said that the current investor pool is not able to back the high number of early stage startups with overlapping products or business models.
“Most startups today are being built on standards that have come up in the last 10-15 years, which stands as a possible reason that they are not getting the big funds,” he said, adding that instead investors can take a differentiated view on business models that fit more closely with their overarching thesis.
Krishna Dunthoori, Founder, HyKr Venture Studio believes that AI by itself is not solely responsible for the new wave of venture studios. But he added: “AI has collapsed the cost of building a first version of almost anything, and that’s making a lot of investors ask, ‘Why do I need a founder at all?’.”
Dunthoori added that AI can’t help when go-to-market strategies fail, or for large customer churns, shifts in the market. “The investors who understand this will use AI to augment founders, not replace them.”
Essentially, VCs are not building companies on their own because of AI, but rather that the go-to-market timeline and product development horizon have shifted. This is why finding a founder and enabling them to leverage AI for an idea with high conviction is easier now.
Jethwani said that W Health has continued to evolve its incubation-like venture studio strategy and operating model over the past two-three years, focussing largely on identifying large white spaces in healthcare, both in India and the US-India corridor.
He explained that the firm takes up the role of an operator-builder, where they end up creating ideas, building ventures around these ideas, onboard founding teams and founders to expedite the journey from zero to product market fit and beyond.
AI has levelled the playing field for early stage founders. The 2026–2027 period stands out as the highest-leverage moment to build and scale, according to Google and Inc42’s comprehensive Bharat AI Startups Report, 2026. It’s no wonder that even investors are looking at this window to build the right products.
In this light, the Indian AI market is expected to reach a $126 Bn opportunity by 2030, with a potential GDP impact of $1.7 Tn by 2035, according to Google and Inc42’s comprehensive Bharat AI Startups Report, 2026.
Startups leveraging AI to create a solution to an Indian problem at scale are already a big attraction for investors, but this model enables more leverage for investors.
It’s not just VCs. Launched by Apty founder Krishna Dunthoori and starting operations in March 2026, HyKr Studio is looking to change how early-stage startups are built in India. It plans to build up to 20 high growth ventures along with other founders and operators in sectors like deeptech, health, construction and proptech, with an initial commitment of ₹100 Cr, across two cohorts by FY27.
HyKr Studio claimed that its approach would be co-creation via a structured studio model, and it will make investments in the range of ₹2 Cr to ₹4 Cr per company as part of this hands on partnership.
The concept has even grabbed the attention of Zerodha cofounder and podcast host Nikhil Kamath and Future Group founder Kishore Biyani, who jointly launched The Foundery in December 2025. The Foundery claims it will identify, mentor and co-build innovative businesses with Indian entrepreneurs.
It operates as a 90-day residential launchpad where cofounders build ready-to-launch business ideas with The Foundery leaders. Beyond mentorship with the prominent business leaders from the Indian startup ecosystem, the venture school offers them capital and a community to build.
VenturEdu founder Rana told Inc42 that looking at the entrepreneurship training landscape in India, the existing medium via incubators, accelerators and legacy institutions are tied up with traditional faculty, who are challenged with limitations in commercialising an idea.
VenturEdu’s Rana explained the upside is that majority of the equity in the startup being originated in a venture builder lies with the investor, where about 80% equity is held by the investor and the remaining 20% will be the founder.
“A founder is a part owner and an employee, while the majority of the investment and the equity is with the investor,” he added.
VenturEdu is set to launch its first cohort in April 2026, where it would onboard 50 founders from India and Dubai over a 14-month journey, leading to 15 startups getting ₹1 Cr each to scale up.
Rana said that the investment can be much bigger depending on the startup’s potential, and the venture studio is even willing to stick on till Series A stage and beyond.
The AI-Fuelled Entrepreneurial WaveHe said, the venture studios attention towards building companies arises while noticing entrepreneurs seeking to gain modern guidance and aid to launch and scale a business via startups such as Mesa School of Business, Masters’ Union and Bower School of Entrepreneurship.
Antler, VenturEdu, HyKr, Prototyze, W Health and others are looking to bet on this potential groundswell in entrepreneurship. Ideas are often more plentiful than knowing what to do to build the company. Beyond capital aid and mentorship, there’s also the matter of hiring the right talent, having the right tech stack and having the right GTM strategy, which venture studios often specialise in.
Investors turning builders is not new, and neither is the flow of operators to the investor side. But this hybrid role of thinking like a founder while also having a VC-like mindset is definitely gathering momentum.
One thesis is that AI will enable many small companies and one-person teams to leapfrog existing solutions just on the basis of capital efficiency. VenturEdu’s Rana explained that from a private markets perspective, India was never the contender for the infrastructure layer level, as cheque sizes are small and patient capital is limited at scale.
So far, Indian AI startups have raised $18 Bn since 2020, and almost 86% of this has gone to the application layer. Applications are also foremost on the mind for investors turned startup founders and those running venture studios.
Most active private investors now look at AI as a horizontal theme for all of their investments and portfolio companies as well. Investors have also become relatively better at recognising how a particular use case will deliver value to the end user.
Of course, in that case, a lot of the risk falls on finding the ideal founder who is working on that idea. But if the timing of an idea is right, investors and VCs are more than happy to jump on that opportunity rather than wait for the right founder to come along.
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