Agentic AI startup program will enable Indian startups to build AI agent-powered commerce applications on the Unicity Protocol
ZUG, Switzerland, Feb. 27, 2026 -- Unicity Labs, the company pioneering autonomous agentic marketplaces, and PadUp Ventures, one of India's leading startup incubators, today announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of agentic commerce infrastructure across the Indian startup ecosystem.
The partnership will identify, mentor, and fund Indian startups building applications where AI agents can discover, negotiate, and transact autonomously: from SMB sales automation to supply chain coordination to cross-border payments.
The Agentic Commerce Opportunity
As AI agents become capable of acting on behalf of businesses and consumers, they need infrastructure purpose-built for machine-speed commerce. Today's payment rails and marketplaces were designed for humans, not millions of agents negotiating and settling transactions simultaneously. Traditional blockchains create consensus bottlenecks. Centralized platforms sacrifice trustlessness. Neither scales to the demands of the autonomous economy.
The Unicity Protocol solves this: a novel peer-to-peer blockchain architecture that eliminates the shared ledger entirely, enabling private negotiation, atomic settlement, and throughput exceeding 300 million transactions per second with 1-second finality and fixed microcent fees.
"India has 63 million SMBs, most of them bandwidth-constrained," said Pankaj Thakar, Partner at PadUp Ventures. "They can't afford sales teams or 24/7 customer support. AI agents change that equation entirely; but only if the infrastructure exists for agents to transact at scale. That's what Unicity provides."
What the Program Includes
PadUp is launching a dedicated Agentic Commerce Track within its acceleration program PrepUp, focused on startups building on the Unicity Protocol. The partnership will drive joint go-to-market efforts targeting Indian SMBs and enterprises, with qualified startups gaining access to investment from both PadUp's network and Unicity's ecosystem fund.
- Dedicated Agentic Commerce Track: PadUp will launch a focused acceleration track for startups building on the Unicity Protocol
- Go-to-Market in India: Joint efforts to bring agentic commerce solutions to Indian SMBs and enterprises
- Funding: Qualified startups will have access to investment from both PadUp's network and Unicity's ecosystem fund
Why India
India's startup ecosystem, now the world's third-largest with over 112,000 recognized startups — is uniquely positioned for agentic commerce adoption. A massive, underserved SMB market, deep developer talent across AI and blockchain, rapidly expanding digital payments infrastructure, and established cross-border trade corridors to the UAE, Southeast Asia, and beyond make it one of the highest-potential markets for the autonomous economy.
"India doesn't just adopt technology, it scales it," said Mike Gault, CEO of Unicity Labs. "UPI proved that. We believe Indian founders will build some of the most important agentic commerce applications in the world, and PadUp is exactly the right partner to find and support them."
About Unicity Labs
Unicity Labs is building the infrastructure for the autonomous agentic internet. The Unicity Protocol replaces shared ledgers with peer-to-peer cryptographic objects, enabling AI agents to discover, transact, and settle autonomously. Founded by veterans of blockchain and cryptography, Unicity Labs has raised $3M in seed funding led by Blockchange Ventures with participation from Outlier Ventures and Tawasal. The company is headquartered in Abu Dhabi. The Unicity Foundation, established in Switzerland, oversees protocol development and community governance.
Learn more unicity.ai | https://x.com/unicity_labs | https://sphere.unicity.network
About PadUp Ventures
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Gurugram, PadUp Ventures is a Virtual Accelerator providing Programmatic Mentoring and Assured Funding that Ensures 500% higher chances of success for Early Stage Technology Startups/ entrepreneurs. PadUp's structured "programmatic" mentoring and acceleration programs have helped hundreds of startups achieve success and growth. PadUp has helped over 350 tech companies in India and UAE that have generated value of $200 million USD for their stakeholders. Portfolio companies include IntelleWings, TruScholar, and Olbrain.
Learn more: PadUp.in
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