ZUG, Switzerland: Unicity Labs and PadUp Ventures have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of agentic commerce infrastructure across India’s startup ecosystem.
The collaboration aims to empower Indian founders to build AI agent-powered commerce applications on the Unicity Protocol, strengthening the country’s role in the emerging autonomous economy.
The partnership will identify, mentor, and fund Indian startups developing applications where AI agents can autonomously discover, negotiate, and transact – from SMB sales automation and supply chain coordination to cross-border payments.
By enabling startups to leverage agentic commerce infrastructure, the initiative seeks to build systems purpose-designed for machine-speed commerce.
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The Agentic Commerce Opportunity
As AI agents become capable of acting on behalf of businesses and consumers, they require agentic commerce infrastructure built for high-speed, autonomous transactions.
Existing payment rails and digital marketplaces were designed for human interactions — not millions of AI agents negotiating and settling transactions simultaneously.
Traditional blockchains face consensus bottlenecks, while centralized platforms compromise trustlessness. Neither approach effectively scales to the performance requirements of the autonomous economy.
The Unicity Protocol addresses these limitations through a peer-to-peer blockchain architecture that eliminates the shared ledger model. It enables private negotiation, atomic settlement, throughput exceeding 300 million transactions per second, one-second finality, and fixed microcent fees – capabilities specifically aligned with scalable agentic commerce infrastructure.
“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.”
Dedicated Acceleration Track Under PrepUp
PadUp Ventures is introducing a dedicated Agentic Commerce Track within its PrepUp acceleration program. This specialized track will support startups building applications on the Unicity Protocol, providing structured mentorship and market access to help them deploy scalable agentic commerce infrastructure solutions.
Program Highlights:
- Dedicated Agentic Commerce Track: Focused acceleration for startups building on the Unicity Protocol
- Go-to-Market in India: Joint efforts to introduce agentic commerce solutions to Indian SMBs and enterprises
- Funding Support: Qualified startups gain access to investments from PadUp’s network and Unicity’s ecosystem fund
Through coordinated go-to-market initiatives, the partnership aims to drive adoption of agentic commerce infrastructure across India’s SMB and enterprise segments.
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Agentic Commerce Infrastructure: Compelling Environment for Rapid Adoption
India’s startup ecosystem – now the world’s third-largest with over 112,000 recognized startups – presents a compelling environment for the rapid adoption of agentic commerce infrastructure.
The country’s large and underserved SMB base, deep AI and blockchain developer talent pool, expanding digital payments ecosystem, and strong cross-border trade corridors to the UAE and Southeast Asia collectively create favorable conditions 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 infrastructure for the autonomous agentic internet. Its Unicity Protocol replaces shared ledgers with peer-to-peer cryptographic objects, enabling AI agents to discover, transact, and settle autonomously – forming the foundation of scalable agentic commerce infrastructure.
Founded by veterans in blockchain and cryptography, Unicity Labs has raised $3 million 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.
About PadUp Ventures
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Gurugram, PadUp Ventures is a virtual accelerator providing programmatic mentoring and assured funding designed to significantly enhance early-stage startup success rates.
PadUp’s structured mentoring programs have supported more than 350 technology companies across India and the UAE, generating stakeholder value of $200 million USD. Its portfolio includes startups such as IntelleWings, TruScholar, and Olbrain.
