New Delhi, Aug. 12 -- Venture capital firm Accel, which has backed Flipkart, Swiggy and Freshworks, says generative artificial intelligence (AI) has fundamentally changed the metrics Indian investors have relied on for over a decade to assess and value startups, with the focus now shifting to whether AI companies can deliver durable margins rather than simply grow quickly.

During India's consumer-internet boom between 2011 and 2019, investors could use measures such as repeat purchases, customer-acquisition costs and contribution margins to gauge whether a business was achieving scale. For software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, annual recurring revenue (ARR) and net revenue retention became central markers of product demand and efficien...