Unicity and PadUp Launch AI Agent Commerce Initiative in India

ZUG, Switzerland – February 27, 2026 – In a strategic move poised to accelerate the future of digital business, agentic infrastructure firm Unicity Labs and Indian startup incubator PadUp Ventures have announced a partnership to build out an ecosystem for 'agentic commerce' in India. The collaboration will establish a dedicated program to mentor and fund startups developing applications where autonomous AI agents can independently discover, negotiate, and execute commercial transactions.

This initiative places India at the forefront of a burgeoning technological shift, where intelligent software agents act on behalf of businesses and consumers, automating complex commercial activities from sales and procurement to cross-border payments. The partnership aims to provide the foundational technology and support system necessary for India's vibrant startup scene to build and scale these next-generation applications.

The Dawn of the Autonomous Economy

Agentic commerce represents a paradigm shift from today's human-centric e-commerce model. Instead of people manually searching, comparing, and purchasing goods, AI agents are envisioned to handle these tasks autonomously. These intelligent systems, capable of reasoning and planning, could manage a company's supply chain, run automated sales outreach, or act as personal shoppers for consumers, all while operating and transacting with each other at machine speed.

The economic potential is staggering. Market research from firms like Ark Invest projects that agentic AI could drive as much as $9 trillion in e-commerce sales by 2030, while McKinsey estimates the global opportunity could range from $3 trillion to $5 trillion. This forecasted explosion in machine-to-machine transactions, however, highlights a critical bottleneck: the world's current financial and marketplace infrastructure was designed for humans, not for millions of agents transacting simultaneously.

"As AI agents become capable of acting on behalf of businesses and consumers, they need infrastructure purpose-built for machine-speed commerce," a statement from Unicity Labs detailed. Traditional blockchains, with their consensus mechanisms, can create bottlenecks, while centralized platforms often sacrifice the trustless nature required for autonomous systems. The market is racing to solve this challenge, with tech giants like OpenAI and Google developing protocol standards to facilitate communication between agents and merchants.

Building the Rails for Machine-Speed Commerce

Unicity Labs is tackling this infrastructure problem with its Unicity Protocol, a novel peer-to-peer blockchain architecture. The company claims its protocol sidesteps the limitations of traditional shared ledgers entirely. By enabling private negotiation and direct, atomic settlement between agents, the protocol is designed for massive scale. Unicity Labs reports its infrastructure can achieve throughput exceeding 300 million transactions per second with 1-second finality and fixed, microcent fees—performance metrics essential for a functional autonomous economy.

This technical approach differentiates it from other players in the nascent agent infrastructure space. While some focus on creating conversational standards or payment rails on existing blockchains, Unicity is building a new foundational layer designed from the ground up for agent-to-agent transactions. The company, which has raised $3 million in seed funding, is betting that this purpose-built infrastructure will be the key to unlocking true agentic commerce.

Through the partnership, PadUp Ventures will launch a dedicated 'Agentic Commerce Track' within its PrepUp acceleration program. This track will specifically nurture startups building on the Unicity Protocol, providing them with technical mentorship, go-to-market support, and access to capital from both PadUp's network and Unicity's own ecosystem fund.

A Lifeline for India's 'Bandwidth-Constrained' SMBs

The most immediate and profound impact of this initiative could be felt across India's massive small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector. With 63 million SMBs forming the backbone of the economy, many operate with significant resource limitations.

"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."

This sentiment reflects a deep-seated challenge in the Indian market. Despite rapid digitalization, many SMBs struggle with the cost of technology, a persistent digital skills gap, and the complexity of integrating fragmented software solutions. Agentic commerce offers a potential solution by packaging sophisticated capabilities into autonomous systems. An AI agent could function as a tireless sales representative, a supply chain coordinator that automatically sources the best prices, or a customer service bot that resolves issues around the clock, all without the significant overhead of hiring specialized teams.

By providing a platform for these solutions, the Unicity-PadUp partnership aims to empower SMBs to compete on a more level playing field, boosting efficiency and opening up new growth opportunities that were previously out of reach.

India as a Global Hub for Agentic Innovation

The decision to anchor this ambitious project in India is a strategic one, leveraging the nation's unique confluence of talent, market scale, and digital readiness. Home to the world's third-largest startup ecosystem with over 112,000 recognized ventures, India possesses a deep well of developer talent in both AI and blockchain.

Furthermore, the country has a proven track record of scaling digital technologies at an unprecedented rate. "India doesn't just adopt technology, it scales it," noted 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."

The widespread adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has created a digitally native payment culture, providing fertile ground for new transactional technologies. This, combined with established cross-border trade corridors and a massive, underserved SMB market, makes India a prime candidate to not only adopt but also innovate within the agentic commerce space. The joint program aims to harness this potential, fostering a new generation of startups that could define the future of autonomous business, both within India and on the global stage.