Indian Military Veterans Turning Founders in Tech
31 Aug 2026
A growing cohort of Indian military veterans is trading fatigues for founder titles, building startups that span defence tech, fintech, and community platforms. Their stories suggest a quiet but notable pattern: military service may be shaping a distinct founder profile in India's startup ecosystem.
The veterans building companies
Anthony Anish, a former Wing Commander in the Indian Air Force, left the service a decade ago and became a founding team member of MyGate alongside fellow ex-IAF pilot Vijay Arisetty. MyGate is a mobile-first platform that digitises security, maintenance billing, accounting, and daily operations for housing societies. Anish later became chief operating officer of T-Hub, the Telangana Government's startup incubator, and now serves as co-founder and managing partner at Factoryal. He is also an investment committee member of Jamwant Ventures, a VC fund focused on deeptech defence startups.
Col Sanjeev Govila (retired) joined the Army at age 16 and served for 27 years before taking voluntary retirement in March 2010. He founded Hum Fauji Initiatives, which helps armed forces personnel manage money, investments, children's futures, and retirement planning. The company has onboarded 3,500 families as clients.
Chandan Singh Rathore, a retired Indian Air Force pilot, founded Coreshield in 2023, an IIT Delhi-based deeptech defence and security startup. Coreshield has built an AI-based security platform called Pulse (Predictive Unified Enforcement System), which draws on sensors, cameras, thermal systems, seismic detectors, and audio sensors to detect threats in real time. Co-founder Rana Amit K Navin brings over 15 years of aerospace and defence technology engineering experience, while co-founder Bhavya Kumar is a former staff engineer at Palo Alto Networks who previously worked with Bank of America and Empower in the US.
Teja Manakame, shortlisted in the early 1990s for the second batch of IAF women officers, completed a six-year service commission before moving into the private sector. She joined TCS as a developer, then Dell Technologies as a manager in 2005, spending nearly 19 years there and rising to vice president of IT. She now heads technology at Curriculum Associates' India office.
What's driving the pattern
Several threads emerge from these profiles. Veteran founders appear to bring specialized domain expertise—Coreshield's sensor-based AI platform draws directly on defence and security engineering backgrounds. There's also visible interest from institutional capital: Jamwant Ventures' focus on deeptech defence signals growing VC appetite for this niche. And in areas like financial planning for armed forces families, veteran founders may be addressing genuinely underserved markets, as Hum Fauji Initiatives' 3,500-family client base suggests.
The presence of veterans in incubator leadership—Anish's stint as T-Hub's COO—also points to broader institutional openness toward non-traditional founder backgrounds.
Why founders should care
For early-stage founders, these stories carry a few probabilistic signals worth weighing rather than firm conclusions:
- Military leadership experience may translate into transferable operational discipline and crisis-management skills relevant to startup building, though the report offers no direct performance data to confirm this.
- Veteran-to-veteran co-founder networks—like the Anish-Arisetty pairing at MyGate—could point to an emerging informal ecosystem worth watching if you're recruiting co-founders or early team members with similar backgrounds.
- Deeptech defence appears to be attracting dedicated VC attention through funds like Jamwant Ventures, which might open a funding pathway for founders with relevant technical or military domain expertise.
- Niche, underserved communities—such as armed forces families—could represent viable go-to-market wedges, as illustrated by Hum Fauji Initiatives' client traction.
Risks and open questions
The picture is far from complete. None of the companies mentioned—Factoryal, Hum Fauji Initiatives, or Coreshield—have disclosed funding, revenue, or detailed financial metrics in available reporting, making it difficult to assess actual business viability beyond founder credentials. Coreshield and similar defence-tech startups also face the long sales cycles typical of government and defence procurement, which can strain runway and slow growth. Hum Fauji Initiatives' focus on armed forces families, while a clear niche, may also cap its addressable market size.
Other gaps remain: it's unclear how many total military veterans have moved into Indian entrepreneurship or what share of the broader startup ecosystem they represent. The current career path of MyGate co-founder Vijay Arisetty, Coreshield's actual client base and revenue, and Factoryal's specific business focus are also not detailed in available information.
Bottom line
These profiles illustrate a discernible, if still narrow, trend of military veterans founding and leading Indian startups across defence tech, fintech, and community platforms. For founders and investors, the takeaway is cautiously optimistic: veteran-led ventures may offer differentiated domain expertise and access to niche markets, but the lack of disclosed financial data means the long-term viability of these specific companies remains an open question.