The rise of serial entrepreneurship in India is a crucial aspect of the country's economic development driven by innovation. With the maturity of the startup ecosystem over the last ten years, more and more founders are diversifying their businesses beyond a single industry, with experience, capital, and networks effectively serving as venture enablers to start new ventures in new industries. This is a positive sign of the increasingly sophisticated nature of the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem, where founders are not merely starting businesses but also ecosystems, which allow ever higher levels of innovation.
The state of the Indian startup sector in the early 2010s was characterized by the presence of the first-generation founders in e-commerce, fintech, and food delivery. As time went by, the viability of these projects as well as the access to venture capital and a robust digital infrastructure enabled seasoned entrepreneurs to experiment on new forms of business. Many started moving across the borders between the fields, introducing the proven business skills into new spheres of business like health technology, electric mobility, and consumer platforms.
Among the examples of this shift, one can distinguish Ankit Mehrotra. Mehrotra is a finance professional and an entrepreneur who in 2012 co-founded Dineout, which was one of the first restaurant-technology and restaurant-dining sites in India. The project contributed to making the urban restaurant system in the country formal with the use of digital reservations, payments, and loyalty programs. After Dineout expanded and was acquired by Swiggy in 2022, Mehrotra moved to healthcare entrepreneurship at The Medical Travel Company (TMTC), a platform that facilitates and streamlines medical travel across national borders. His shift from the financial services sector to food technology, followed by healthcare, is another example of how Indian founders are also cross-industry learning to create scalable problem-solving infrastructure.
This tendency is justified by the greater change in the entrepreneurial parent mentality in India—not a short-term initiative but a long-term influence. The former founders who previously created single vertical startups are currently becoming mentors, investors, and ecosystem creators. Most of them are eager to fund early-stage startups in diverse areas of technology, including healthcare tech, EVs, and consumer innovation, which reinforces a culture of collaboration to build the entire startup ecosystem.
The increasing number of serial entrepreneurs in India also reflects trends going on in the world, where well-developed economies have similar founders who spread their influence throughout the industry. The evolution represents belief in the digital economy of the country, institutional capital, and cultural embrace of entrepreneurship as a long-term career choice. With an ever-growing number of founders such as Ankit Mehrotra bridging industries, starting with finance and moving up to food tech and healthcare, the innovation ecosystem in India is slowly transitioning into a cycle of creation, reinvention, and knowledge transfer and becoming more sustainable.
