Serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia launched a new venture called Neo on July 1, 2026, backing it with $30 million of his own money in a direct challenge to the decades-old dominance of Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. Turakhia, who has previously built and sold companies including Directi and Radix, is betting that workplace productivity software designed before the generative AI era cannot simply be patched with chatbot add-ons and must instead be rebuilt from the ground up.
A Ground-Up Redesign, Not a Plug-In
Neo’s core pitch is architectural rather than cosmetic. Instead of bolting an AI assistant onto existing word processors and spreadsheets, the product has been designed so that AI capability sits at the centre of how documents, spreadsheets and communication tools work together. Crucially, Neo is model-agnostic, meaning enterprise customers can switch between different large language model providers rather than being locked into a single vendor’s AI stack, a design choice that mirrors growing enterprise anxiety about depending on any one AI supplier.
Internal Testing Before a Wider Rollout
The software has already been running inside Turakhia’s existing portfolio of companies, giving the team real usage data before opening it up more broadly. Neo’s initial go-to-market will target mid-sized businesses, with knowledge workers in technology, consulting and professional services firms as the first customer segments. That focus reflects a calculated bet: large enterprises are typically slower to switch productivity suites given the sunk cost of existing Microsoft or Google licensing, while mid-market firms are more willing to experiment if the productivity gains are significant enough.
Timing Against a Crowded Field
Neo enters a market where Microsoft has already embedded Copilot across its 365 suite and Google has layered Gemini into Workspace, giving both incumbents a head start in distribution even if their AI integration is less deeply architected. Turakhia’s wager is that being first to market with an AI layer is less important than being right about the underlying design, and that businesses will eventually prioritise tools built natively for an AI-first way of working over legacy suites with AI features added on top.
Part of a Broader Indian AI Investment Wave
The launch lands amid a broader surge in India-origin AI ambition. Indian AI startups drew roughly $3.94 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to industry trackers, with new entrants and unicorns emerging across model-building, infrastructure and applied AI categories. Neo’s emergence as a homegrown challenger to global productivity incumbents adds a new dimension to that wave, shifting the conversation from India as a hub for AI services delivery to India as a source of globally ambitious AI-native products.
What to Watch
The real test for Neo will come once it exits internal use and reaches paying mid-market customers over the coming months. Analysts will be watching adoption rates, whether the model-agnostic approach proves a genuine differentiator for enterprises wary of vendor lock-in, and whether Turakhia’s team can sustain feature velocity against Microsoft and Google’s far larger R&D budgets. For now, the $30 million bet signals that at least one experienced Indian founder believes the productivity software category is due for a full rebuild rather than an incremental upgrade.
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