What is Microsoft Catalyst, and what exactly does it do?

Our focus is on identifying, engaging, and helping nurture AI natives evolving in the space. We find the brightest, fastest-moving, highest-potential AI companies that are getting started, and help them build with our technology.

We offer two things — great technology for them to build a solution, from an AI and an infrastructure standpoint. That is the foundational layer where they can engage with us.

As you develop that solution, if you want to take it to market — particularly in B2B, where our strength lies — we have programmes and ways to engage with startups and builders to support them, whether in the local market or globally.

Our second strength is go-to-market expertise and enterprise penetration, because of our deep relationships with many enterprises. We are seeing many amazing startups go from zero to 100 fast, so it is exciting.

How quickly are startups adopting AI compared to large enterprises?

Many early-stage or even mid-stage startups will embrace AI much faster, because, one, there is a secular shift in the market, and they want to be at the forefront.

It has also given them better speed to market. With how the new software development life cycle is changing and evolving, if you are a software company or a builder trying to get a solution to market, you can go faster just by vibe coding new ideas or prototypes.

What used to take weeks and months, even for a startup, can be done in days and hours. While we are seeing enterprises starting to adopt that behaviour as well, startups are definitely at the forefront of AI adoption.

How are AI natives in India adopting AI, and what role do they play for Catalyst compared to AI natives elsewhere?

India is ahead of the curve. We focus on four countries as we look for up-and-coming or fast-growing AI companies. The United States still has a lot of potential. Alongside, a lot is happening in China, Israel and India. Globally, India is in a leadership quadrant, with many studies indicating the same.

A few reasons are the talent, which is some of the best in the world. There has been growth and transformation to establish the market. Now with AI, many founders are seeing opportunities and how they can do something unique.

That ecosystem is starting to flourish in India. So, you have got the talent, a great legacy of success and successful global SaaS companies, along with a hunger and opportunity for new AI ideas. This market is also faced with constraints in terms of size and scale, for which you have to have low cost and be a low-cost provider. When you are faced with constraints, you innovate.

The lessons learned are applicable around the world. You can move to other markets where you do not have those constraints and still provide service at a lower cost than others. In India, we see brilliant innovation, which gives these startups an advantage when they go global as well.

What differentiation does Catalyst help bring for these startups?

Differentiation in the marketplace is important. We help these startups identify a unique value proposition (USP) they offer in the market. As you help guide a builder, you see many ideas. Some founders have their USP, and some are still working on it.

Our lives are shaped by people who have found unique things. Look at the work we have done with Swiggy, which took a unique opportunity and used technology to do something unlike anything before. Swiggy is using Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence to process streaming operational data like inventory levels and order volumes in seconds, reducing earlier 5–10-minute dashboard delays.

It has also deployed GenAI chatbots built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to automate customer queries like order tracking and support delivery partners. These capabilities help power operations serving 23 million monthly transacting users and 3–4 million daily orders, improving delivery efficiency and real-time decision-making. Who would ever think of delivering something in 10 minutes, and that there will be a need for them? Now it has become a way of life.

Across which sectors are you seeing AI natives most actively embracing AI?

In the enterprise space, an industry that has typically been a laggard is the financial services industry, which also took time to move to the cloud due to regulatory reasons, privacy, and safety. When they figured it out, they moved rapidly. Now with AI, they are moving fast.

Apart from that, manufacturing and healthcare are two other sectors seeing rapid adoption, because they all have large data sets in common. AI is good at finding insights. And when you can do that, these industries are well-positioned to find new value.

You can use AI to process and issue healthcare, find new treatments, identify new drugs, help manage and bring down the cost of hospital systems.

Do any of the startups you are working with present compelling opportunities for Microsoft to invest in or potentially acquire?

It always happens. We have an investment arm called M12, which does investments and equity investments in startups or early-stage startups. We also go beyond just cash investment or capital by offering resources and programs to these startups, helping them build their solutions and bootstrap their businesses.

This can include free use or credits for our technology. We also have incentive programs and investments to help them. There are many different ways we invest as a company, and India represents a great opportunity for us to do that.