Prem Dharmani.
Ask ten founders about AI-driven businesses today, and most will point to the same handful of ideas. Prem Dharmani, founder of the AI-powered Vedic astrology platform Astro247, thinks the crowd is looking in the wrong direction. The biggest openings in AI, he argues, sit in the sectors that rarely make it into a pitch deck.
"For every founder chasing the same three or four AI ideas, there are entire categories sitting almost untouched," he says. "That is where the real opportunity is. Not in copying something that already has ten well-funded players."
It is a view shaped less by theory and more by having built in one of those overlooked spaces himself.
When Prem began work on Astro247, astrology was not an obvious home for serious technology. It was seen as traditional, informal and hard to standardise. That, he says, was exactly the appeal.
"People kept telling me astrology was too old-fashioned to build a real product around," he recalls. "To me that was the signal. When something matters to millions of people, but nobody has built good tools for it, the gap itself is the business."
Astro247 uses AI to handle the calculation-heavy side of Vedic astrology and then explains the results in plain language a first-time user can actually follow. The aim, Prem is quick to add, is guidance rather than fixed prediction. He sees that distinction as central to building anything responsible in this space.
Dharmani's first argument is that founders undervalue categories built on trust and emotion. Astrology is one, and so are wellness and faith-based services. They are personal, culturally rooted, and easy for outsiders to wave away as unserious.
He says that "People don't come to astrology for a spreadsheet. They come for reassurance and a sense of direction during a confusing patch. AI can deliver that at scale, but only if you respect why someone is asking in the first place."
He believes AI in astrology works best as a way to make thoughtful guidance accessible, not to manufacture false certainty. A young professional weighing a job change and a parent worried about a child's future are asking human questions. The technology's job, in his view, is to bring clarity to those questions, not to hand down verdicts. Astro247 leans on this by using AI to surface patterns clearly while leaving the actual decisions with the user. The wider point, he says, is that any sector where people want to feel understood, rather than simply processed, is worth a founder's attention.
Prem's second point is about who actually gets to use these products. Much of India's AI conversation still centres on English-speaking users in the big cities. He sees the larger opening somewhere else entirely.
"A student in a small town has the same questions about career and marriage as someone in Mumbai," he says. "What they have not had is guidance in their own language, at a time and a price that actually suit them."
Regional languages matter here. So does affordability, and so does round-the-clock access. A tool that answers a genuine worry at midnight, in the language someone thinks in, reaches people a metro-first product never will. For Prem Dharmani, this is the version of AI-driven business that grows the market instead of fighting over the same urban customers. He describes it as building for the India that usually gets left out of the demo.
For all his optimism, Prem is wary of the popular idea that AI simply replaces people. "AI is a brilliant assistant and a poor stand-in," he says. "The moment you pretend it can replace human judgement, you lose the user's trust. In a field like ours, trust is the whole business."
His preferred model puts AI on the tough tasks while human expertise shapes tone, nuance and care. He argues this balance is also the honest one. It keeps the technology genuinely useful without overpromising, which matters most in sensitive areas where a careless answer can leave someone anxious for no good reason. That caution, he suggests, is not a brake on growth. It is what lets a trust-based product last.
His advice to people building in AI is refreshingly plain.
"Don't start with the technology," he says. "Start with a real problem people already care about, then ask where AI honestly makes it better. If the answer is nowhere, build something else."
He also advises founders to look at their own backgrounds and culture for ideas rather than importing whatever is trending abroad. Some of the most durable businesses, in his reading, come from pointing new tools at old and well-understood needs. The need is already proven; The work is making it better. He is candid that this path is less glamorous than chasing the newest model or the loudest launch. It is also, he believes, where a lot of quietly successful companies will come from.
Prem Dharmani expects the next few years of AI-driven business in India to look less like a copy of Silicon Valley and more like the country itself. Multilingual, value-conscious, and built around everyday concerns rather than abstract ones.
"Some of the most useful AI companies here will grow out of things we have done for generations," he says. "The job is to make them clearer, kinder and available to everyone. Not to replace them."
For Prem Dharmani, platforms like Astro247 are one small example of that shift. The wider opportunity, he believes, belongs to any founder willing to look past the obvious and build for the people usually missing from the conversation.
