How AI agents are replacing traditional roles in Indian startups

On a hot April afternoon in Bengaluru, the customer‑care floor of a booming food‑delivery start‑up stands eerily quiet. Row after row of swivel chairs sit empty, the faint aroma of masala chai hanging in the air. Last year, 200 agents juggled phones and crib sheets here; today, a dozen bot‑ops engineers monitor dashboards while large‑language‑model (LLM) chatbots settle the same flood of complaints. Scenes like this are now common across India’s startup belt, and they raise a blunt question: what happens when software agents begin doing the jobs that once defined early‑stage career success?