At the News18 Rising Bharat Summit 2025, venture capitalist Rajan Anandan made a spirited defense of India’s quick delivery startups, calling them a symbol of real-world innovation in a complex urban landscape.
Credits: YourStory
Quick Commerce Isn’t Just Convenience—It’s Innovation
Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV Partners and Surge, isn’t mincing words when it comes to defending India’s 10-minute delivery revolution. Speaking at the News18 Rising Bharat Summit 2025 in New Delhi on April 8, he called such services a “remarkable feat of innovation,” pushing back against growing criticism that they’re merely fulfilling shallow convenience for the urban elite.
“To deliver something in 10 minutes in India, in the most traffic-dense cities on planet Earth, is really hard,” Anandan said. “Anybody who says that that is not an innovation, please go try it. Try to build the infrastructure.”
This statement comes just days after Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal questioned the value of such businesses, suggesting that Indian startups fall behind Chinese ones in innovation, and criticizing platforms that, in his words, “turn unemployed youth into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of the house.”
Startups Solving Real-World India Problems
Anandan offered a powerful counterpoint to this narrative: India’s innovation doesn’t have to look like Silicon Valley-style deep tech to be meaningful. He argued that creating real solutions in India’s challenging environments—like chaotic traffic, lack of urban planning, and infrastructure bottlenecks—is a form of innovation uniquely suited to the country.
“Extraordinary India-made innovation is happening in every sector,” Anandan asserted. “And it’s not always about chips or AI. It’s also about solving real operational challenges at scale.”
This mindset sheds light on why startups like Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart have gained traction so quickly. They’re not just delivering groceries fast—they’re reengineering supply chains, rethinking warehouse logistics, and optimizing delivery networks in cities where even a two-kilometre commute can take 30 minutes.
The Deep-Tech Debate: Are Investors to Blame?
Piyush Goyal’s remarks also pointed to India’s underwhelming presence in the global deep-tech landscape, citing that only about 1,000 deep-tech startups currently exist in the country. He urged Indian investors to look beyond quick returns and consumer-facing businesses and instead support startups focused on core technologies, advanced research, and original IP creation.
But Anandan pushed back strongly, calling the idea that Indian VCs aren’t supporting early-stage innovation “absolutely not correct.”
“At the stage when we invest, most times there’s not even a line of code written, let alone like revenue or product,” he noted. “We invest from idea through IPO.”
He pointed to international comparisons—like the U.S., where investors now hesitate if a startup isn’t an AI play, or China, where the state backs massive deep-tech bets—to underline how diverse and risk-tolerant India’s ecosystem has become in its own right.
Policy Shift: India Gears Up for a Deep-Tech Push
Even as the debate plays out publicly, steps are being taken to steer the ecosystem toward more R&D-driven innovation. On April 7, NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub set up a high-powered expert group to draft a 10-year roadmap to deepen India’s R&D capabilities. The move follows a discussion paper that flagged India’s R&D investment—just 0.7% of GDP, compared to China’s 2.68%—as a key concern.
The intent is clear: India wants to be seen not just as a nation of delivery apps and payment gateways, but as a force in frontier technologies, from semiconductors to biotech and quantum computing.
Credits: Money Control
Conclusion: It’s Not Either-Or—India Needs Both
The conversation around India’s startup future is often framed as a binary: deep tech versus delivery. But as Anandan highlighted, both types of innovation are critical. Quick commerce isn’t trivial—it’s a highly optimized operation thriving in one of the world’s toughest markets. At the same time, expanding deep-tech capabilities will require bold investments, long-term thinking, and a coordinated push from government, academia, and industry.
India doesn’t need to choose between problem-solving at scale and building the next AI or quantum breakthrough. To truly lead, it must do both—and recognize the value in each.
