Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Episode: Building A Global AI Startup From India
Date: March 16, 2026
Guests: Mukund Jha & Madhav Jha (Founders, Emergent)
Host/Interviewers: YC Partners (primarily Peter)

Overview

In this episode, YC’s Peter hosts Mukund and Madhav Jha, twin brothers and co-founders of Emergent, a rapidly growing AI startup based in India and the US. Emergent enables anyone, even non-coders, to build and deploy production-ready software via AI agents. Over the past eight months, over 7 million apps have been built using Emergent, fundamentally changing software creation for domain experts and entrepreneurs worldwide. The discussion covers Emergent’s founding story, technical insights, hiring and company culture, the challenge and opportunity of building globally from India, and the transformative impact of agentic software on the SaaS landscape and entrepreneurship.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Emergent’s Rapid Growth and Inflection Point

• Emergent has seen explosive adoption: 7 million apps built in 8 months since launch.
• Initial inflection: realized by pivoting from enterprise-focused automated testing agents to a platform democratizing software creation for non-technical users.
  • “When we were building this testing agents, we realized that if you can solve for verification... you can actually automate all the software engineering. That was sort of our key insight.” (02:18, Mukund Jha)
• 80% of Emergent’s users are non-technical, in 190+ countries (05:14).

2. Backgrounds & Foundation-Building

• Both brothers began coding at age 12, did advanced degrees in the US, worked at Google, Amazon, Zenefits, and previously founded Dunzo (Indian hyperlocal delivery company).
  • “Dunzo was a big company actually, right?”
  • “It was really big. And we are almost a verb in India. So when people ship things they say dunzo it.” (01:41, Mukund Jha)
• Early Emergent started around elite engineering: “cloud code before cloud code was a thing” (04:01, Madhav Jha).

3. Technical Architecture & Product Strategy

Building for Production, Not Prototype

• Emergent built their own infra (Kubernetes, Python backend, React front end)—same stack for users, agents, and their own devs (09:48, Madhav & Mukund Jha).
• Product focus: the “last mile”–apps not just prototyped but fully production-ready, supporting real business workflows, integrations, and deployment.
  • “If you give your agents the same infra during the build time and [...] deploy time [...] you don’t encounter those many problems. The fact that we have our own infra also allows us to give rapid feedback to the agent.” (09:48, Madhav Jha)
• Multi-agent architecture, continual learning via aggregated trajectories, CI/CD pipeline for skills/memory.

Designing for Non-Technical Users

• Hide complexity (like VS code editor, JSON, diffs). Non-technical users “get panicked as soon as they see a diff.” (13:16, Madhav Jha)
• Emphasis on user empathy and “agent empathy.”
  • “I have a term called agent experience that we measure. How is agents[’] experience on the platform?” (13:59, Mukund Jha)
• Agent clarifies requirements with users before building, abstracts API key acquisition.

4. Go-to-Market, Distribution, and Competition

• Leverage influencer-driven growth (TikTok, Instagram), broad-based marketing, but targeted conversion to users wanting to “ship real apps”. (08:09, Mukund Jha)
• Seizing “second-mover” advantage:
  • “With every new model [...] you need to start reimagining the world. [...] The more autonomy you’re able to give to the models, the better they perform.” (05:57, 15:05, Mukund Jha)
• Emergent’s differentiation: robust full-stack apps for real businesses, not just front-end prototyping or toy use cases.
• Agility: Tactically waited for language models (like Opus 4.5) to solve maturing problems (library definitions, unit tests) rather than building fragile workarounds themselves.

5. Real-World Impact & User Stories

• The “great unlock”: domain experts as creators
  • Small and medium business owners (formerly reliant on $500k dev shops) can now build custom software for a fraction of the cost (34:11)
  • “Equimind”—an app marrying clinical psychology and horse riding, built by a solopreneur in Alaska (35:16, Mukund Jha)
  • CRM for lawyers: non-programmer business developer in Norway; solopreneurs, self-sufficient creators.
• “Niche of niches”—unprecedented diversity and specificity in apps possible only with democratized software creation (37:45, Mukund Jha).
  • “There’s just so much focus on AI is going to replace jobs [...] but [...] if you want to start your own business and have autonomy over your life, like you are empowering that at scale.” (00:12/37:01, Peter/YC)

6. Internal Adoption & Dogfooding

• Internal teams (e.g., marketing, QA, customer support) build and run their own tools (like an Asana clone) on Emergent.
• Teams collaborate by submitting “feature requests” in natural language for agent implementation (23:35).

7. Organizational Practices & Culture

• Small, elite team primarily in Bangalore, India, with a SF presence. Many early hires are top Indian engineering talent (e.g., Top 100 IIT rankers) (25:49).
• Culture of maximal ownership and problem-solving; expect 1-2 people to do the work of much larger teams.
  • “For example, our deployment, which almost mirrors what Vercell would look like, is done by two people. Like our memory [...] just built by one person.” (25:49, Mukund Jha)
• Every team member (including engineers) does customer support and must talk to customers weekly. (27:55)
  • “Everybody does customer support. [...] It was a really hard decision for us because, you know, [...] you need to ship really fast and then move one of your best engineers out [to] customer support was really hard. But I think that really, really helped us build the customer empathy from day zero.” (27:55, Mukund Jha)
• Use AI to overcome language barriers for global support.

8. Building Global from India

• Emergent started with global ambition—determined not to be just an “Indian company.”
  • “Why is there no Google or Facebook from India? [...] I think every single country has an opportunity to build for [a] global audience. And [...] if you dream big [...]” (26:24, Mukund Jha)
• Most users are in the US/Europe; India provides deep technical talent and cost advantages, while founders split time to maximize reach and product standards.

9. The Future of SaaS and Agentic Software

• The rise of personal “agentic” software built on platforms like Emergent poses a challenge to classic SaaS businesses.
  • “Unless your SaaS company pivots into an agent-first company [...] that’s going to be hard to survive.” (29:20, Mukund Jha)
• Increasingly, apps feature embedded agents, and users are building entirely custom, context-specific applications for their workflows.
• Internal research: Agent swarms (dozens/hundreds of agents coordinating) and verifiers for longer-horizon task automation (31:21–32:28).

10. Market Expansion & Social Impact

• The market is expanding, not shrinking—AI tools are enabling more work and more creativity, not simply replacing jobs.
  • “We are letting non-developers now be developers.” (17:37, Mukund Jha)
  • “We are seeing this internally [...] work that was done by like 5, 6 people can now be just done by a single engineer or a single PM.” (17:37, Mukund Jha)
• The "Cambrian explosion" of new software is creating new niches, allowing individuals to start small businesses that were previously economically impossible.
  • “We really want to reduce this gap between idea and reality and truly enable people to express themselves and really, really have this Cambrian explosion of ideas.” (38:26, Mukund Jha)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “unlock” of AI for domain expertise:
  “People who have had an idea for a long time, people who are really domain expert, very close to a problem, can now go and build things up.” (36:04, Mukund Jha)
• On global ambition:
  “If you just dream big, if you’re able to [...] really, really think global from day zero, I think now, because internet is [...] fully penetrated, people can actually get knowledge from everywhere.” (26:24, Mukund Jha)
• On design vs. function:
  “Earlier there used to be a big trade off between design and functionality. [...] We had to figure out how do we sort of share the context in a way where design also gets better.” (19:33, Mukund Jha)
• On the future of SaaS:
  “Unless your SaaS company pivots into like an agent-first company, [...] that’s going to be hard to survive.” (29:20, Mukund Jha)
• On collaborative, natural language development:
  “A PM can give a feature, a QA can give a feature. Somebody from our HR team can give a feature to sort of build that out right now.” (23:35, Mukund Jha)
• On user autonomy:
  “If I could just say it out loud myself, I would do a better job. [...] That kind of agency is what people are looking forward to with these kinds of platforms.” (36:23, Madhav Jha)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:12 – Introduction and vision: AI as empowerment rather than replacement.
• 01:18–02:48 – Founding story, transition from hyperlocal delivery (Dunzo) to software agent company.
• 04:10–05:13 – Pivot from research/coding agents to tools for non-technical users.
• 09:46–13:16 – Technical deep dive: infra, architecture, agent learning, non-technical UX.
• 15:05–15:57 – Trusting the pace of LLM improvement, giving agents more autonomy.
• 17:37–18:07 – Market expansion, evolving product roles, single users achieving multi-role productivity.
• 18:23–22:38 – Demo: no-code app building, user stories (Illinois AV setup, Norway legal CRM).
• 22:43–24:40 – Internal dogfooding, collaborative building, and version control.
• 25:49–26:24 – Team structure, hiring for extreme ownership and talent density.
• 27:39–28:51 – Company culture of empathy, direct customer support by all.
• 29:20–32:28 – SaaS disruption and emergence of agentic, personal software.
• 34:11–37:01 – User impact: real businesses, non-programmer creators, global scale.
• 38:26–39:08 – Closing thoughts: the coming “Cambrian explosion” of ideas and businesses.

Conclusion / Key Takeaways

Emergent embodies a new wave in software and AI—a platform as powerful as a team of top engineers, yet designed for everyday entrepreneurs and creators worldwide. Rooted in technical rigor and relentless user empathy, its dual presence in India and the US signals a new era of globally ambitious startups. The conversation underscores that the future of work, software, and entrepreneurship is not displacement but the empowerment and multiplication of human agency—ushering in a world where anyone can build software to fit the most niche of needs, and the barriers between ideas and reality are melting away.