Startups offering agentic AI solutions are now seeing increased demand from small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and startups across growth stages.
So far, the demand was emanating mostly from large tech companies that were actively adopting agentic AI. Now, most B2B startups, that offering agentic AI solutions, are receiving over 20-30% of the demand from startups compared to less than 5% at the beginning of the year.
Notably, agentic AI is simply an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can perform complex tasks with minimal or no human supervision. Ganesh Gopalan, co-founder and CEO, Gnani AI, observed that traditionally, AI agents and workflow automation have been seen as capital-intensive and out of reach for smaller players. “However, this mindset is fast changing ,” he told FE adding that smaller businesses are beginning to recognise the tangible ROI of intelligent automation.
Around 30% of the firm’s demand for its upcoming DIY no-code, multimodal agentic AI platform, Inya, has come from small and mid-sized businesses. The firm also claims to be tailoring its offering for SMBs by making it more affordable. Gnani caters to over 200 clients across sectors such as banking, insurance, BNPL, NBFCs, MFIs, telecom, and automotive. Its agentic AI solutions power use cases such as customer service, fraud detection, collections, and customer engagement. Notably, the compani has been selected under the IndiaAI Mission to help build a sovereign foundational large language model (LLM). According to Tracxn, there are 106 active agentic AI companies in India.
Agentic AI startup Zigment, which offers an autonomous AI layer on top of a company’s phone, chat, and email channels, currently gets roughly 25% of the demand from SMBs, startups and the rest from large enterprises. The startup claims that in the US, it is seeing a strong pull from digital-native, D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands that want to move Tier-1 support and retention workflows to AI. It is also seeing significant interest and growth in the BFSI sector in the UAE and the broader MENA region as well.
Another key player in the segment, Info Edge-backed enrolment automation firm Meritto, says the adoption of agentic AI is being driven more by an institutional mindset than organisational size. Its Mio AI– for education—has attracted 18-20% of demand from edtech startups like Adda247 and rest from large large universities as SRM University, Manipal University and BITS Pilani. “Whether it’s a leading private university or a digitally native coaching institute, they want AI that delivers outcomes, not just AI that answers questions,” Naveen Goyal, CEO and founder, Meritto, said.
Cohyre, an agentic AI recruitment intelligence platform, built to suit large-scale hiring organisations, is seeing strong traction from startups and mid-sized businesses that demand efficiency and accuracy without bloated workflows. “These companies value fast turnaround times and lean hiring stacks, where our agents act like an extended team of hiring analysts,” Vishal Sharma, CTO, Cohyre AI, said.
