On the ET Now stage in Mumbai, the trophy for AI & Deep-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year went to Anvesh Tiwari, Founder & CTO of Laraware. Awards like this usually land with metro-based, venture-funded names — which is part of why this one reads differently. The engineer holding it started out writing code from a small town in Uttar Pradesh, and the company he built now ships software that banks and enterprises actually run in production.
What the award is, and where it sits
The recognition came at the ET Now Business Conclave & Awards 2026 (West Edition) — a national platform run by ET Now that puts a spotlight on founders and companies pushing real technology forward, not just growth charts. The AI & Deep-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year category is one of the harder ones to win because it asks a specific question: has this person built something with genuine engineering depth, or just wrapped a trend in a pitch deck? The award was presented by the Hon'ble Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Anvesh's name appears on the official West Edition winners list.
From a village near Ayodhya to a national stage
Anvesh's story is one he tells plainly: gaon se global. He grew up with roots in Pirkhali, a village near Ayodhya, and taught himself to build. Over the last twelve-plus years he went deep on one craft — architecting production systems — instead of chasing every new trend. That patience is why Laraware today runs across Lucknow, Ayodhya, and Gurugram, with a presence in New York, and why a founder from small-town UP is now being named AI Entrepreneur of the Year on a stage that mostly features people from the big metros.
It matters for a simple reason. When a Deep Tech of the Year recognition goes to someone who came up outside the usual funding networks, it says the work stood on its own. Nobody hands you a deep-tech award for storytelling alone — the product has to hold up.
Why Laraware is an AI-native engineering company, not an "AI company"
There's a difference between bolting a chatbot onto a website and building systems where intelligence is part of the architecture. Laraware sits in the second group. The team has spent over a decade shipping software for regulated, high-stakes environments — the kind where a single failed transaction is a real problem, not a support ticket.
- 12+ years of engineering leadership — deep expertise in the frameworks and patterns that keep large systems stable under load.
- 580+ APIs in production — not prototypes; live integrations doing real work every day.
- 4.9★ Google rating — a track record clients actually put their names next to.
- Banking-grade discipline — the same rigour used for fintech carries into everything else the team builds.
Put together, that's what an AI & Deep-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year profile is supposed to look like: measurable output, systems that survive contact with real users, and a founder who can still read the code.
What NXT Banking has to do with it
The clearest example of Laraware's engineering is NXT Banking — a white-label B2B fintech platform built for banks and enterprises. The same system routes payments, flags fraud, and reconciles settlements in real time. AI isn't a marketing word there; it's what keeps the numbers matching at scale. A trophy for AI & Deep-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year is, in effect, national validation of that platform and the people who wrote it.
"This one is for the team, and for everyone building serious technology far from the metros. We didn't set out to win an award — we set out to build systems that banks could trust with real money. Being recognised as AI & Deep-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year tells us the engineering spoke for itself. AI built in India, awarded in India — that's the part I'm proud of."
— Anvesh Tiwari, Founder & CTO, Laraware
What this means going forward
National recognition is nice on a shelf, but the more useful thing is what it signals to the people deciding who to trust with their software. It says Laraware is being judged in the same room as the country's most talked-about deep-tech founders — and holding its own. For clients weighing partners for AI, fintech, or large-scale platform work, that's the honest read: this is a team that builds, ships, and gets it right where it counts.
Read more about the team behind this work on our About page.
Building something that has to work at scale? Talk to the Laraware team about AI, fintech, and enterprise-grade platforms.