Emergent Ventures India, 20th cohort
Zahan Turel, a backend engineer and eighth-generation Zoroastrian priest from Surat, received a grant to digitize his community’s manuscripts and liturgical records before they are lost. Aditya Vijay, 17, is building Forge, supporting overlooked, self-taught young founders with shared housing, capital, and access. Dev Goyal received a grant for SCRIPT, exploring whether stylus-based drawing…
Emergent Ventures India announced its 20th cohort of winners, supporting innovative projects from across India. Zahan Turel, a Zoroastrian priest, used his grant to digitize community manuscripts and liturgical records before they disappear. Aditya Vijay, 17, developed Forge to support young founders lacking resources, offering shared housing, capital, and access.
Dev Goyal's SCRIPT project explores using stylus-based drawing kinematics to assist in clinical triage for mental health conditions like ADHD, autism, and anxiety.
Adwait Tiwari, 16, created BharatBahi, a WhatsApp-native AI assistant to help Indian shopkeepers. Mayukh Goswami and Meher Manda are developing a graphic novel exploring democratic crises through the lens of an Indian town. Ajith Chekka is building Oru’el, a physics-enabled intelligence layer to enhance data center efficiency. Gaurav Kumar, a software engineer and social entrepreneur, is creating OncoVault to convert cancer records into AI-generated clinical summaries, aiding physician decisions.
Kush Agrawal, an IIT Bombay engineering student, received funding for Tensor Recon, aiming to improve financial reconciliation infrastructure for high-volume cryptocurrency trading firms. Mohd. Ashzad, a security researcher and engineer, is developing Build Jam to help South Asian builders discover skills in AI, design, filmmaking, and photography. Vaibhav Sai, 25, is working on AI for intent-based biomolecular design, beginning with a nucleotide-focused model.
Rithvik Vibhu and Rithwik Jayasimha received funding for research on passive optical fiber network vulnerabilities, including wiretapping and ISP infrastructure attacks, with presentations at Black Hat USA 2026 and DEF CON 34. Neha Sarda's Zyogen aims to make regenerative medicine more affordable by converting injury images into patient-specific graft designs. Hari Shankar Ramalingam, cofounder of SpaceTug, is developing autonomous spacecraft technologies for satellite servicing and life extension.
Laiba Noor received a travel grant to develop a speech-analysis tool for detecting presymptomatic Alzheimer’s in low-resource settings. Abhishek Raj, a 16-year-old crime and mystery writer, received funding to advance his writing and criminology research. Kunal Kanase, an IIT Bombay pre-doctoral fellow, is studying Dharavi residents' wellbeing and developing low-cost mental health tools. Divyaratna Joshi is creating low-cost S-PEEK membranes to make fuel cells and electrolyzers more affordable and manufacturable.
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