‘Ideas are scarce, it’s capital that is in abundance’

If you have a business idea that you believe in, there is no dearth of capital, said Asish Mohapatra, co-founder of two unicorns, OfBusiness and Oxyzo. But then came the caveat: “If you look for equity first, you will miss the bus. You have to believe that the scarcity is on your (ideas) side and the abundance is on the capital side.”Instead, extract cash straight from the operations, through cus - tomer advances or supplier credit. Failing that, tap into debt, where India’s liquidity runs a massive 20 to 22 times the availability of equity.At the TOI Ideas for India 2026 summit, industry heavyweights dissected the evolving economy and the new opportunities, including the future of AI, global capability centres (GCCs) and startups.“It’s like Rancho said in ‘3 Idiots’. If you chase excellence, everything else chases you. In the beginning, they (investors) all invest behind the person,” said Mohapatra. Across the aisle, Optum Global senior V-P Surinder Singh shifted the lens to the grass - roots — the medium- and small-scale indus - tries that form the bulk of the Indian econo - my.Given a chance to invest, Singh wouldn’t place his money into a mega-factory. He would invest it on shared digital capabilities for lakhs of starved MSMEs. While behemoths easily absorb advanced tech, small businesses are left stranded without demand forecasting or logistics intelligence.“Productivity cannot stop with large companies,” Singh said. Responding to a similar opportunity to in - vest, Mohapatra bypassed tech glamour entire - ly, arguing that India’s core structural foundations remain cracked and needs capital.“India lacks the ability to build the tools that can create the future,” he said, urging capital injection into heavy manufacturing, traditional thermalbacked power, infrastructure, and logistics.While green energy grabs headlines, “making thermal power efficient is what I would rather put money into”, said Mohapatra. On the question of AI, both speakers had compelling arguments to make.While Mohapatra stands as a watchful sceptic, maintaining that the immediate cost of AI implementation far outweighs returns for any business. Singh counters that AI isn’t an innovation theory anymore, it’s the core operating agenda.The bottleneck isn’t buying the software, it’s building the data governance and risk frameworks to survive the future. “The prob lem for organisations that don’t see benefits, or that are holding back and watching from a distance, is organisational readiness,” said Singh.In the end, Mohapatra revealed that his founders’ fund has backed 50 to 60 startups in manufacturing and financial services, proving that a new wave of unicorn founders is recycling wealth back into smaller players.And on the GCC front, with legacy IT hiring hitting a wall, India’s 2,500 GCCs, which have mutated from cheap back-offices into global innovation powerhouses, Singh delivered the final verdict. “We are very far from peak GCC.”You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.