Zoffer started with one idea: a small business in India should be able to turn its bills into proper books from the chat app it already uses all day, WhatsApp. The India AI Impact Summit in February was the first big room we took that idea into.
Big summit, bigger crowd
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 ran at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi from 16 February, and was later extended by a day, to 21 February. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology organised it under the IndiaAI Mission, around three themes it called the sutras: People, Planet and Progress.
The guest list was not small. Delegations came from over 100 countries, including more than 20 heads of state, and the tech side included Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis. All India Radio put the total footfall at over five lakh visitors.
Zoffer had been incorporated for about three months. We were, to put it gently, not the most famous name at Bharat Mandapam that week.
The expo
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo on 16 February. It had more than 300 exhibitors from 30 countries across 10+ thematic pavilions, covering robotics, multilingual AI, healthcare, agriculture, education and fintech security.
One thread ran close to home. Several exhibits were about AI for financial inclusion, including better credit access for gig workers, informal businesses and MSMEs. That is our corner of the map. For most of the MSMEs we meet, the records do exist, just as bills in a drawer and photos in a WhatsApp chat, and nobody has time to turn them into books.
What the summit announced
A lot, over six days. Sarvam AI launched language models at 30 billion and 105 billion parameters. BharatGen unveiled Param2, a 17-billion-parameter model supporting 22 Indian languages. The government said it planned 20,000+ more GPUs for the IndiaAI Compute Portal, and Microsoft announced a USD 50 billion investment commitment.
The headline outcome was the New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact. Outlook Business reported that 88 countries and organisations, including the US, China, the EU and the UK, had adopted it by the close, and a few more joined afterwards. The summit also set a Guinness World Record for AI responsibility pledges, with over 2.5 lakh collected in 24 hours.
What we were doing there
Mostly, we were talking to people. Other founders, investors, people from banks and fintechs, students, and a fair number of visitors who asked about us because "AI accounting on WhatsApp" sounded unlikely enough to be worth a question.
Our answer was the same every time. A business owner forwards a bill on WhatsApp, Zoffer's AI reads it and drafts the accounting entry, a person approves it on a dashboard, and it lands in Zoho Books. Next to a 105-billion-parameter model that sounds small. It is AI pointed at a narrow, boring and very real problem, and at a summit about AI's impact, "boring and real" turned out to be a pretty good conversation starter.
What we brought home
Sore feet, for one. Bharat Mandapam is large, and five lakh people make it feel smaller. We also brought home a clearer sense of where we fit. Most of the summit was about AI at national scale: compute, models, declarations. Somebody also has to make AI useful to the shop owner with a drawer full of bills, and that is the job we picked.
That was the first test, and the idea held up. The expo's own exhibits on credit for MSMEs told us we weren't the only ones who thought small businesses deserved serious AI. What we didn't know yet was how people would react once they saw the product itself working. We found out in June, at our own incubator's launch.
Frequently asked questions
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 was held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from 16 to 21 February 2026 (extended from the original 16 to 20 February). It was organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IndiaAI Mission.
It was the main outcome of the India AI Impact Summit 2026. It covers equitable sharing of AI's benefits, democratic access to AI resources, trusted and secure AI, and inclusive growth. 88 countries and organisations, including the US, China, the EU and the UK, had adopted it by 21 February 2026, and more joined later.
Yes. The Zoffer team attended the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam and spent it talking to founders, investors, fintech and banking people and visitors about WhatsApp-based bookkeeping for Indian MSMEs.
Sources
- India AI Impact Summit 2026, Wikipedia.
- India AI Impact Summit showcases AI innovation and collaboration, News on AIR, 22 February 2026.
- AI Impact Summit 2026 concludes with 88 nations and organisations adopting New Delhi Declaration, Outlook Business.
- India-AI Impact Summit 2026, Press Information Bureau.