Semiconductor design, AI to drive India’s next innovation wave: Founders Forum CEO

Founders Forum is a global platform that connects leading entrepreneurs, investors, and corporates to drive collaboration and innovation across markets. Through curated forums and networks, it enables founder-led exchange of capital, ideas, and partnerships across key tech ecosystems. As it returns to Mumbai after a decade, Carolyn Dawson, CEO of Founders Forum, in an interaction with The Economic Times Digital, outlines the platform’s long-term vision of building a permanent global tech corridor between India and leading innovation hubs worldwide and more. Edited excerpts:

ET: How does Founders Forum envision India’s role in building a permanent global tech corridor with leading innovation hubs?
Carolyn Dawson (CD): India is already one of the world’s major tech powers. The opportunity now is to build the connective tissue between India and other leading hubs to enable structural, ongoing collaboration. The most durable corridors are built by founders who trust each other, and that peer-to-peer network travels further and faster than any company can go alone. That’s why Founders Forum exists and why we’re so excited to once again host a flagship forum in India.

ET: What changes would India need over the next five years to move from being a major start-up hub to a true global innovation anchor?
CD: The talent and ambition are already there in abundance. What’s needed is better access to late-stage capital and a clear path to global scale. Becoming a true innovation anchor means owning the underlying technology, not just the delivery layer, and India has everything it needs to get there. We’re relaunching Founders Forum India to showcase India’s prowess on the global tech stage and help build bridges between the ecosystem here and leading global innovation hubs.

ET: Can founder networks serve as informal bridges between innovation economies, effectively emerging as a new form of tech diplomacy?
CD: Absolutely, and they already are. We’ve seen it across every region and sector we work in; it’s founder relationships that actually move capital, talent, and opportunity across borders. Our goal at Founders Forum is always to help build these bridges.

ET: What barriers still limit Indian start-ups from scaling internationally, and how can global founder networks help overcome them?
CD: Access to late-stage capital and regulatory complexity are perennial challenges, but geopolitical unpredictability is increasingly the wildcard. Tariffs and policy shifts can redraw the map overnight. Global networks act as a cushion against this volatility.

Start-ups in India also have a vast domestic market, but this can make the transition from national to international even more challenging. International scale is achieved far more easily with a global mindset from day one, and having a global founder network provides a significant advantage.

ET: Have you seen a shift in the profile of Indian founders over the past five years in terms of governance standards, capital efficiency, or global ambition?
CD: The founders we are meeting now are building for global markets and sustainable growth from day one. That’s not unique to India; it’s the defining characteristic of the best founders globally. As capital becomes harder to access, founders are becoming both more efficient and more ambitious.

Increasingly, there is demand for founders with deep product expertise. As AI lowers barriers to entry, those with a strong understanding of both market and product hold the advantage, and this presents a significant opportunity for founders in India.

ET: How critical is regulatory alignment between India and other innovation hubs in enabling deeper cross-border tech collaboration?
CD: When regulatory frameworks around data, IP, and finance don’t align, collaboration stalls. The UK and India, in particular, have a strong opportunity in fintech, AI, and healthtech, where better-aligned data governance could unlock cross-border R&D at scale.

ET: In a tighter funding environment, how are global investors recalibrating their India strategy? Are they becoming more selective or more long-term focused?
CD: Markets that once felt like obvious bets are now less predictable, pushing investors to diversify and think more carefully about long-term exposure. India stands to benefit from this recalibration.


ET: Which technology sectors do you see driving India’s next phase of global trade and innovation leadership?
CD: AI is the headline, but the real opportunity lies where India’s AI capabilities intersect with sectors it already dominates, such as financial services, healthcare, and enterprise software. I would also watch education closely. The scale of India’s edtech infrastructure creates solutions with strong export potential, particularly across the Global South.

ET: Beyond SaaS and fintech, where do you see India building structural global advantage—AI infrastructure, climate tech, deeptech, or semiconductor design?
CD: Semiconductor design is the one I would watch most closely. India has the engineering depth, and the pipeline is strengthening as supply chains diversify. But the bigger structural advantage is scale: solving problems at a billion-user level creates proof points no other market can replicate.