What happens when India's most experienced operators turn founders?
That's the question we set out to answer in the second edition of our report with
@Tracxn: The State of Operator-Led Startups, 2026. It arrives as we mark 15 years of investing in India.
This edition tracks 189 startups founded by operators between 2023 and 2025, and finds a cohort punching well above its weight:
▪️ Making up less than 1% of new tech startups, and commanding 11% of the total funding raised in 2025
▪️ Raising seed rounds 1.7x larger than the market average
▪️ Being 16x more likely to reach Series A
▪️ Increasingly building at the frontier, with 1 in 4 startups focused on AI
The edition also brings together perspectives from our founders who have made this transition themselves. Thank you Ayyappan, Abhinav, Chirag, Rohit, Saurabh, Shivali and Sidu for sharing why they took the leap, what the early days actually felt like, and what they'd say to the operator still thinking about it.
India's next generation of founders trained inside its last one. If that's you, read this closely:
rtp.vc/state-of-operator-led…