Bengaluru Hosts Percussion Festival

The fourth edition of the Mahindra Percussion Festival returned to its Bengaluru roots on March 7th and 8th, 2026, taking place at the Prestige Centre for Performing Arts. The event, organized by the Mahindra Group in association with The Hindu, aims to unify India's diverse regional percussive dialects on a single platform. The lineup featured an intergenerational collaboration called Nada Pravaham, led by Padma Vibhushan awardee and mridangam maestro Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, alongside next-gen artists Ishaan Ghosh (tabla) and Shravan Samsi (drums). Grammy-nominated tabla virtuoso Bickram Ghosh also presented "Drums of the East," a project celebrating the rhythmic traditions of Bengal with instruments like the sreekhol and dhol. Spotlighting inclusivity, the festival featured "Women Who Drum," a collective including Swarupa Ananth (tabla) and Charu Hariharan (mridangam). Another performance, "The Parai Awakens," brought one of Tamil Nadu's oldest folk instruments into the mainstream, an instrument historically used for announcements that later became a symbol of resistance and cultural reclamation. This celebration of rhythm and innovation is set against the backdrop of Bengaluru's tech ecosystem, which saw its startups raise $825.5 million in Q4 2024 and $633 million in Q1 2025. While late-stage funding has contracted, early-stage deals showed a 34% quarter-over-quarter increase in Q1 2025, signaling a continued focus on new ventures. For GTM leaders in this market, the focus is shifting from static lists to signal-based marketing to identify the small fraction of in-market buyers. This intent-driven ABM, powered by platforms like Demandbase and 6sense, uses behavioral signals to prioritize outreach, leading to 20-30% better conversion rates from AI-scored leads. When selling API products to this ecosystem, usage-based pricing is gaining traction over traditional per-seat models, as it aligns customer cost directly with consumption of resources like API calls. The sales motion for these developer tools is also evolving, with AI-powered platforms like Navattic and Walnut enabling the creation of no-code, interactive product demos that allow technical buyers to self-explore. As local HR tech startups like Hunar.AI and Leena AI leverage artificial intelligence, the broader Indian HR landscape is moving from simple chatbots to "Action AI" that automates workflows like candidate screening and onboarding. For 2026, key trends include navigating new labour codes that impact payroll liabilities and adapting to a talent market where verified skills are becoming more valuable than generic degrees. For founders and leaders scaling their own ventures, the primary challenge shifts from hands-on execution to building resilient systems. As teams grow, leaders must deliberately transition from founder-led control to a collaborative model, defining core values and communication cadences to prevent the dilution of culture that often accompanies rapid hiring.