The traditional waiting period—gaining experience, capital, or confidence —before starting up is rapidly disappearing, particularly among Gen Z entrepreneurs, Kumaresh Pattabiraman, India Country Manager of LinkedIn, told Outlook Business in an interview.
A recent study by the global professional networking platform found that India saw a 104% year-on-year rise in users adding “Founder” to their profiles, the highest growth globally, reflecting a wider shift in how professionals view careers and ambition today.
Talking further on the trends emerging from the report, Pattabiraman also spoke about how first-time founders are using AI to build businesses and how to identify whether these are being utilised for long-term sustainability or short-term efficiency, job scenarios in Tier-2 cities as compared to metros, and LinkedIn's evolving role beyond a jobs platform into what he describes as a “knowledge and opportunity network”.
1 May 2026
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Edited excerpts:
LinkedIn's data shows a 104% year-on-year jump in people adding 'Founder' to their profiles in India. Is it a reliable signal of actual entrepreneurial activity, or does it also reflect something about how professional identity and ambition are being expressed differently today?
Updating your LinkedIn profile is a considered decision. It reflects how professionals see themselves and want to be seen by their network, potential partners, and investors. That’s why it’s a meaningful signal. We’re seeing a 104% year-on-year increase in members in India adding ‘Founder’ to their profile, the highest growth we are seeing across markets, which points to a real shift in how professionals are thinking about their careers.
Calling yourself a founder is not just about what you’ve already built, but about intent - a signal of ambition and willingness to create. And often, that shift in identity is where the momentum to build actually begins.
What is the single biggest behavioural shift you have noticed in how today's entrepreneurs think and operate, compared to even five years ago?
Five years ago, many entrepreneurs waited - to build experience, capital and confidence before starting. That waiting period has gone down significantly. Today, three in four (75%) Gen Z entrepreneurs in India already have multiple income streams, building and testing ideas in parallel, not sequentially. This isn’t impulsive. It’s a rational response to a world where tools are more accessible, distribution is digital, and the cost of starting has fallen dramatically.
The report also finds that 81% of Indian founders believe entrepreneurship is more achievable today, regardless of background or connections. What has actually changed on the ground? Because at the same time, seed-stage funding in India fell nearly 30% in 2025.
The infrastructure for entrepreneurs has fundamentally changed. When over 80% of Indian entrepreneurs say starting a business is more achievable today, they are reflecting a shift driven by technology. AI is lowering barriers that once made early-stage building expensive and complex, making it easier for founders to experiment, build, and scale. We’re seeing founders use AI across hiring, marketing, and sales to drive efficiency from day one.
At the same time, the funding environment remains an important consideration for scaling. But what’s clear is that the barrier to starting has reduced significantly - and that’s where we’re seeing the strongest momentum.
Are you seeing this translate into meaningful founder activity from smaller cities and towns?
Absolutely. LinkedIn data shows that SMBs [Small and Medium-Sized Businesses] in cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad are now outpacing larger metros in AI adoption and business confidence. These cities are no longer trying to catch up; they are setting the pace. Job openings in Tier-2 cities on LinkedIn grew 42% in six months—outpacing metros—which is a clear indicator of growing business activity in these cities.
Founders today are building digital-first businesses, hiring through platforms like LinkedIn, and building personal brands that give them reach that was previously metro-exclusive.
If 85% of Gen Z founders say AI has been important in starting or running their business, could the current founder wave also be partly driven by a tightening job market and concerns around AI-led job displacement?
There are two shifts happening simultaneously. First, AI is augmenting roles rather than replacing them outright - enabling professionals to focus more on higher-value, human skills like creativity, decision-making, and leadership. Second, the definition of work itself is evolving. Careers are becoming more fluid and less tied to a single role or employer. Today, many professionals are combining jobs, side ventures, and creative pursuits - building what we call portfolio careers.
So when 85% of Gen Z founders say AI is important to their business, this isn’t just a response to a changing job market - it reflects a broader shift in how people think about work, opportunity, and career progression. AI is enabling them to expand what’s possible.
What are the signals that a founder is genuinely using AI as a business advantage not productivity shortcut?
The clearest tell is specificity. Founders who are using AI meaningfully can point to exactly what it’s changed—whether it's qualifying leads, reducing turnaround time, or improving hiring decisions. AI has moved from experiment to infrastructure. Our research shows that founders are embedding it across hiring, marketing, and sales. In fact, nine in ten SMBs use AI to automate workflows and strengthen analytics and business intelligence, while 65% are already using AI hiring tools to improve outcomes.
LinkedIn has also integrated AI across its own platform. From a product standpoint, how do you measure whether these integrations are improving real, sustained user engagement, not just activity metrics?
We don’t measure success by activity—we measure it by outcomes. The real question we ask is: are we helping professionals and businesses achieve what they came to do, faster, more effectively, and with greater confidence? For entrepreneurs and small business owners, that means very tangible things—finding the right hire without a dedicated recruiting team, building visibility with the right audience, or converting connections into customers. AI plays a role here, but only if it meaningfully improves those outcomes.
Ultimately, we look beyond engagement metrics to assess whether founders are operating more efficiently, making better decisions, and seeing progress in growing their business over time. That’s a much higher bar than usage.
As AI becomes more embedded in the platform and third-party integrations also grow, how does LinkedIn ensure that user data is not being exposed in ways that could quietly erode the trust people place in it, particularly professional data which tends to be quite sensitive?
Professional data carries a different weight than most - it's tied to someone's livelihood and reputation. LinkedIn has long used data to enhance members' experiences through AI-driven features like people you may know, skills match, and content relevance—and how we use that data is never ambiguous. Members can review our Terms of Service to see how we use the data they provide.
As AI advances, our commitment stays the same: maintaining trust, keeping member experiences safe, and helping them extract maximum professional value from the time they spend on LinkedIn.
With this changing preference to become entrepreneurs, how do you think LinkedIn's role has also evolved over the years from a jobs platform?
LinkedIn has evolved from being a jobs platform to a knowledge and opportunity network, where professionals don’t just find jobs, but build expertise, share insights, and grow their presence. Today, a founder on the platform isn't just posting a vacancy. They're building a personal brand that becomes their business's first credibility signal. In fact, LinkedIn’s research shows that 67% of Indian entrepreneurs now identify as content creators, because showing your thinking publicly is how you build an audience that trusts you before they buy from you.
They're using their network to find early customers, advisors, and hires, and our research reflects that. 80% of Indian entrepreneurs say their professional network has been critical to their growth. They're upskilling in real time through LinkedIn Learning. They're discovering prospective talent, finding clients, and building communities around their ideas. The platform has evolved to support that entire arc, and interactions on the platform have moved beyond expanding networks into meaningful engagement that moves someone’s business or career forward.
If a first-time founder was about to post their first big business update, what should they remember before hitting publish?
The instinct is always to craft something broad enough to impress every possible reader – investors, customers, potential hires, peers—which mostly ends up producing something that resonates with none of them. Lead with purpose, not product. People don't follow businesses; they follow people who are building something they believe in. Be specific about why it matters to you, who it's for, and what problem you're genuinely trying to solve. The what—the features, the milestones, the metrics—can come later. What earns attention first is honesty about the journey. The founders who build real, lasting audiences on LinkedIn aren't the ones with the most refined updates. They're the ones who make readers feel like they're on the inside of something genuinely worth following.
