Indian tech tycoon invests $30M to build AI-native Microsoft Office rival
Original: Indian tech tycoon bets $30M of his own money to build AI alternative to Microsoft Office
Why This Matters
A $30M founder-backed AI-native office suite signals growing conviction that incumbents cannot retrofit AI effectively.
Indian serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia has personally committed $30 million to launch Neo, an AI-native enterprise work platform combining project management, documents, file storage, and AI. The Bengaluru-based startup, built in three months with ~45 employees, plans to target mid-sized businesses in coming months.
Indian serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia, 46, is self-funding a $30 million bet on Neo, a new enterprise AI platform designed to compete with Microsoft Office and similar incumbent workplace software. Turakhia, who previously co-founded Directi, Radix, Titan, and banking software firm Zeta, argues that legacy workplace tools cannot simply be retrofitted with AI. 'If you want to build an iPhone, you can't take the parts of a Nokia and somehow convert it into an iPhone,' he told TechCrunch. Launched internally in April 2026, Neo integrates project management, documents, file storage, and AI into a single product. The platform is model-agnostic, allowing enterprises to switch between AI providers rather than being locked into one. Turakhia estimates the initial platform — built in just three months using AI-assisted development — would have taken more than a year with a larger pre-AI engineering team. The Bengaluru-based startup currently employs about 45 people and has been tested internally across Turakhia's companies including Zeta. Neo plans to roll out to mid-sized businesses in technology, consulting, and professional services in the coming months. Despite fierce competition from Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Anthropic, OpenAI, Notion, and Superhuman, Turakhia said enterprise software has never been a winner-takes-all market. 'Even if we end up with 2% to 5% market share, that's larger than anything I've built so far,' he said.