Thank You, Partners, For Making Inc42’s CTO Summit 2026 A Success

On September 30, Inc42 hosted the inaugural CTO Summit 2026 at JW Marriott, Bengaluru, gathering over 200 senior technology leaders to discuss how India's technology ecosystem is building and scaling in the AI era. The summit brought together CTOs, engineering, product, data, and AI leaders from top tech startups such as Meesho, Swiggy, Flipkart, and Rapido to discuss AI adoption, engineering productivity, infrastructure, architecture, and systems needed to build at India's scale.

Ten-plus sessions covered topics beyond AI experimentation, including the economics of running AI workloads, data quality, verification, resilience, and the changing role of engineering teams. Speakers shared insights on AI reshaping products and user interactions, with Swiggy's CTO Madhusudhan Rao discussing AI agents for commerce beyond the app, and Flipkart CTO Balaji Thiagarajan exploring shift from keyword-led product discovery to understanding consumer intent.

The summit also addressed the engineering organization's evolving nature, with AI-assisted coding increasing software generation and the growing importance of design, review, testing, verification, and systems thinking. Building for India's scale, challenges in building AI products for budget smartphones, multiple languages, and patchy connectivity, as well as keeping infrastructure and inference costs under control, were also key themes.

Three technical demos showcased AI applications in real-world systems, including Zomato's AI enterprise systems, Rapido's engineering adaptations, and Razorpay's autonomous engineering agent, Slash. Infrastructure and data foundations supporting these systems were also examined, with discussions on architecture, capacity planning, resilience, data quality, access controls, and reliable data foundations for AI applications.

PhonePe Payment Gateway's CTO Srijon Biswas highlighted AI-driven efficiency gains, while Oracle's Palanivel Saravanan emphasized the importance of bringing AI models closer to data for better learning and user response. The success of the event was attributed to the support of sponsors and partners, including PhonePe Payment Gateway and Oracle, who helped make the inaugural Inc42 CTO Summit a reality.