India's Biggest Tech & Business Event Is Coming Back. Here's why it matters for today’s businesses!

The number 25,000 became a symbol of India's open-source software community's growth, marking the crowd size at last year's Odoo Community Days India in Gandhinagar. This September, the event returns asOdoo Experience India 2026, now positioned as the largest gathering in the country focused on the core question: how should a growing business manage its operations?

Last Year, By the Numbers (2025 Edition)

The scale of the 2025 edition is worth revisiting, because it sets the baseline for what this year is expected to top.

Held at the Mahatma Mandir Convention Center on August 13–14, the main event followed two days ofSmart Classes and the Odoo Hackathon, which secured a place in the India Book of Records and Asia Book of Records for the largest 24-hour offline recruitment hackathon. More than 18,000 people registered for the hackathon, 8,800 took part in virtual rounds, and 1,000 were invited to the offline finale. A parallel business challenge gave MBA students a chance to work directly with Odoo's systems, an early pipeline into the ecosystem that most software conferences don't bother to build.

The keynotes came from Fabien Pinckaers, Odoo's CEO, and Mantavya Gajjar, managing director of Odoo India. Pinckaers used the stage to flag India as one of the company's fastest-growing markets; Mantavya Gajjar laid out the roadmap and partner ecosystem for the year ahead. A smaller, more unusual detail: a lunch session gave a group of attendees direct table time with Fabien Pinckaers to talk about scaling, AI, and entrepreneurship, the kind of access that's rare at any conference, let alone one built around enterprise software.

Throughout the venue, more than 250 exhibitors showcased their offerings, with continuous sessions covering AI, finance, HR, CRM, retail, manufacturing, F&B, and e-commerce. The Odoo Smart Mart provided a live retail setup demonstrating inventory software in action rather than just slides. The Odoo POS Café underscored the event's scale by serving over 14,000 cups of coffee and snacks over the two days, showcasing an end-to-end experience from ordering to serving.

This impressive scale and depth set a high benchmark for the 2026 event.

What more is there to add in OXP 2026?

Without spilling a lot of tea at once, a few things separate this year's edition from last year, based on what organizers have flagged so far.

A new version, live at the event. As with previous editions, attendees get an early look at Odoo's next release before it's available more broadly, offering genuine incentives for founders and implementation partners planning their next system upgrade in advance rather than reacting to it later.

Deeper localization, built for India specifically. This year’s roadmap emphasizes deeper localization specifically built for India. Rather than adapting a global product for the Indian market, Odoo focuses on India-specific localizations and integrations addressing compliance, tax, and workflow nuances that determine whether an ERP truly fits local business needs or merely approximates them.

AI moving from a feature to the default. The direction Odoo has signaled is AI woven into the core of day-to-day operations, inventory forecasting, finance reconciliation, and customer follow-ups rather than a chatbot bolted onto the side. For a founder evaluating software today, that's less about novelty and more about how much manual work quietly disappears from a team's week.

A more hands-on, less lecture-hall experience. The event offers a more hands-on, interactive experience beyond traditional sessions. Attendees can engage with live product walkthroughs, demos instead of booths, and branded merchandise corners that transform the exhibitor area into an immersive experience zone rather than just a row of stalls.

A stronger line-up on stage. Alongside returning voices, organizers have signaled a broader set of business leaders and creators joining this year, giving attendees a wider spread of perspectives, from operators who've scaled real companies to creators who've built audiences explaining exactly what that process looks like.

More Founders, Bigger Creators & Wider Reach!

The 2025 speaker list already looked unusual for a software event: Aman Gupta, Ranveer Allahbadia, Sharan Hegde, Ganesh from Think School, Abhi and Niyu, along with creators like Madan Gowri and Mahesh Keshwala, brought a scale of reach that most B2B conferences never attempt. This year's edition is expected to widen that pool further, with organizers positioning the event less as an ERP conference and more as a meeting point for founders, operators, and the creators who influence how young entrepreneurs make decisions.

That mix has a practical effect beyond who's on stage: it turns the exhibitor floor and session halls into a denser networking environment than a typical trade show, where a first-time business owner, a partner running a 50-person implementation partner firm, someone willing to start a business, a corporate professional, and a business creator covering the space can end up in the same conversation, all inside two days.

Why Is This Worth Registering For?

None of this changes the core reason the event exists. India has an estimated 63 million MSMEs, and a large share of them have spent years priced out of enterprise-grade software built for much bigger companies. Open-source ERP removes that barrier: lower cost, no vendor lock-in, a simpler way of daily operations, and a system that can be reshaped around your business instead of the other way around.

What's shifted is the scale of proof behind that argument. A gathering that pulled 25,000 people and 250-plus exhibitors last year, adding a new release, deeper localization, and AI-first tooling this time around, is no longer a niche technical meetup. It's becoming one of the clearer signals of where India's operating-systems decisions are heading next.

Odoo Experience India 2026 takes place September 11–12 at the Mahatma Mandir Convention Center, Gandhinagar. Registrations are open on Odoo's official event page.

Note to readers: This article is part of Mint’s paid consumer connect Initiative. Mint assumes no editorial involvement or responsibility for errors, omissions, or content accuracy.

Want to get your story featured as above? click here!