LAB32: Accelerating Deep-Tech Innovation
LAB32 is one of India's most competitive deep-tech acceleration programmes, run jointly by T-Hub — Telangana's flagship innovation hub — and Hexagon, the global leader in digital reality solutions. The programme selects a small cohort of high-potential startups each cycle, providing access to mentorship, technology infrastructure, enterprise networks, and go-to-market support.
Cohort 13 marks Indika AI's continued engagement with the LAB32 ecosystem, building on the company's earlier selection and award wins through previous programme iterations. The cohort focuses on startups applying AI, computer vision, and digital reality technologies to solve complex, large-scale infrastructure and operational challenges.
Hardik Dave on the Startup Journey
T-Hub's feature spotlights Indika AI Co-founder and CEO Hardik Dave, who shares insights on building an AI company in India's rapidly evolving technology landscape. Dave discusses the strategic importance of focusing on enterprise-grade AI infrastructure — the often-invisible layer of data operations, annotation pipelines, and model training workflows that determine whether AI systems succeed or fail in production.
A chartered accountant by training, Dave brings a distinctive lens to AI entrepreneurship — one that emphasises financial sustainability, operational rigour, and client value creation alongside technical innovation. This combination has shaped Indika AI's trajectory from a data annotation startup to a full-stack AI data infrastructure company with deep sector expertise.
"The real moat in AI is not the model — it's the data infrastructure behind it. We've spent three years building that infrastructure, and LAB32 has been an important part of our journey."
T-Hub's Role in India's Innovation Ecosystem
T-Hub, based in Hyderabad, operates as India's largest innovation hub — connecting startups with government, corporates, investors, and international partners. Its LAB32 programme with Hexagon is a flagship initiative, designed to bridge the gap between early-stage deep-tech innovation and enterprise deployment.
For Indika AI, the programme provided access to Hexagon's global enterprise network, technology testing environments, and structured pathways to pilot deployments — critical accelerants for a company building AI solutions for complex infrastructure domains including road monitoring, judicial systems, and healthcare data operations.
About Indika AI
Indika AI is a data-centric AI company founded in 2021, building AI infrastructure and sector-specific AI solutions across judicial, infrastructure, healthcare, and enterprise domains. The company's platforms — DataStudio and FlexiBench — power large-scale AI data operations for foundation model developers and enterprise clients worldwide.