AI
Indian Entrepreneur Turakhia Invests $30M in Neo, an AI-Native Office Alternative
Serial founder Bhavin Turakhia is betting on rebuilding workplace software for the AI age, rather than bolting AI onto legacy tools.
TechCrunch — AI
Bhavin Turakhia, an Indian tech entrepreneur with a track record of backing ambitious ventures, is committing $30 million of his own capital to launch Neo, a workplace platform designed from the ground up for artificial intelligence. The move reflects his conviction that enterprise software built in the pre-AI era cannot simply be retrofitted with chatbots — it requires fundamental redesign.
Why a New Office Platform?#
Turakhia argues that incumbents face an inherent disadvantage when adding AI capabilities to products created before generative AI existed. Rather than attempting to adapt legacy systems, Neo was built from scratch with AI as a core architectural component. The platform is also designed to be model-agnostic, allowing companies to switch between different AI providers rather than being locked into a single vendor.
"If you want to build an iPhone, you can't take the parts of a Nokia and somehow convert it into an iPhone," Turakhia told TechCrunch.
What Neo Offers#
The platform integrates project management, document editing, file storage, and AI capabilities into a unified workspace. Unlike traditional productivity tools where AI operates as a separate tool employees access on demand, Neo positions AI as an active participant embedded throughout daily workflows.
The Bengaluru-based startup launched internally in April 2026 and has been tested across Turakhia's portfolio companies, including banking software firm Zeta. The team built an initial working version in just three months — a timeline Turakhia estimates would have required over a year with a larger pre-AI engineering team.
The Competitive Landscape#
Turakhia is far from alone in seeing opportunity in enterprise AI. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce are rapidly embedding AI into their workplace offerings, while a wave of startups — from AI labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI to productivity tools like Notion and Superhuman — are reshaping business workflows.
Yet Turakhia maintains that enterprise software has never been a winner-takes-all market. Even modest market penetration could prove valuable: capturing just 2% to 5% of global enterprise AI spending, he notes, would exceed the scale of any company he has previously built.
