Peak XV’s Rajan Anandan on Frugal and Local AI, Exits and More

India's AI revolution demands strategic vision beyond enthusiasm. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Rajan Anand, Managing Director of Peak XV and Surge a former Microsoft India head and Google VP shaping India's venture landscape. With 120 unicorns and 300 IPOs last year, India is poised for transformation. Anand's thesis: India needs localized, hyper-affordable AI models—not trillion-parameter ones. Predicting fifty AI unicorns by 2030, he advocates computational sovereignty through infrastructure investments in firms like Sarvam. Rajan also talks about Peak XV’s path after its split with Sequoia Capital, past governance issues at its investees and guardrails to avoid them and the recent spate of senior level exits in the company.