Finvolve & IA Back Vikra Ocean Tech with $1M to Build India’s First Indigenous Ocean Robotics Stack

Finvolve, a multi-stage venture capital fund, has announced a seed investment of $1 million in Vikra Ocean Tech, a Chennai-based deeptech startup developing India’s first fully indigenous ocean robotics stack for underwater and surface operations. The investment, led by Finvolve along with India Accelerator, will be utilized to scale product manufacturing, strengthen the company’s sales pipeline across defence and public sector undertakings (PSUs), and establish recurring revenue streams through service contracts and annual maintenance agreements.

Founded in 2019, Vikra Ocean Tech is developing an indigenous, modular ocean robotics ecosystem that includes deep-water ROVs, autonomous surface vessels, amphibious crawling robots, and AI-enabled imaging and communication systems. Built for interoperability through a unified control platform, its solutions address India’s dependence on imported underwater robotics by offering cost-effective, mission-ready systems tailored for defence, subsea inspection, hydrographic surveys, and disaster response. Its integrated hardware stack is supported by indigenous cameras, lighting, diver communication systems, and AI-based video enhancement tools for simplified and scalable operations.

VIKRA has gained strong early traction across both defence and commercial sectors, including securing two iDEX grants from the Indian Army and the Indian Coast Guard, along with several other prestigious innovation awards. The company has developed India’s first 2000-meter depth-rated deep-ocean camera and lighting systems. Its Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) systems are also seeing wide adoption for offshore marine exploration applications.

The investment comes at a time when global and domestic tailwinds are accelerating the adoption of subsea robotics. With increasing maritime security concerns, rising climate-related disasters, and a strong policy push towards indigenous innovation, the demand for reliable, locally built ocean-tech solutions is growing rapidly. The global subsea robotics market is projected to expand significantly by 2030, while India’s domestic opportunity across inspection, monitoring, and blue economy applications continues to scale, creating a strong foundation for companies like Vikra to emerge as category leaders.

Commenting on the investment, Ashish Bhatia, Co-Founder of Finvolve and Founder & CEO of India Accelerator said –

Subsea robotics is fast becoming a strategic priority for India across defence, infrastructure, and disaster response. Vikra Ocean Tech is addressing this need with a fully indigenous, integrated robotics stack that combines deep-tech innovation with strong on-ground validation. Their ability to build and deploy scalable, high-performance systems positions them well to lead this space from India. 

Rajagurunathan, Co-Founder, Vikra Ocean Tech, added,

Our vision is to build a globally competitive ocean robotics ecosystem from India. This investment enables us to accelerate product development, scale deployments, and deepen our engagement with defence and industrial stakeholders. We aim to significantly reduce India’s dependence on imported systems while delivering robust, cost-effective solutions built for real-world conditions.

Rajeuv, Co-Founder, further added, “This investment will strengthen our R&D capabilities, scale manufacturing, and accelerate deployments across defence, offshore energy, research, and marine infrastructure sectors. We are committed to building reliable, world-class technologies that position India as a leader in ocean innovation.”

With a vertically integrated product stack, growing commercial traction, and strong alignment with India’s strategic priorities, Vikra Ocean Tech is well positioned to scale its operations and play a defining role in shaping the country’s subsea robotics and ocean-tech landscape.

About Finvolve

Finvolve is a multi-thesis growth and late-stage venture capital fund supporting startups across their growth journey from pre-seed to pre-IPO. The fund partners with founders to provide growth capital, strategic guidance, and long-term support, helping companies scale sustainably and build enduring businesses. With investments across high-growth sectors, Finvolve focuses on backing teams that combine strong execution with clear market opportunity.

About India Accelerator

India Accelerator (IA) is India’s leading seed-stage startup accelerator and the recipient of the “Best Accelerator of the Country” award from Startup India (2022). Alongside its accelerator programs, IA actively invests in early-stage startups through Finvolve, three AIFs, and a GIFT City Fund. IA provides founders with capital, mentorship, and market access, enabling scalable and sustainable growth.

India’s EON Space Labs Unveils Germanium‑Free AI Imaging System for Next‑Gen ISR Missions

EON LUMIRA

Deep-tech startup EON Space Labs has launched an indigenously developed ultra-lightweight Germanium-free EO and infrared imaging system designed for advanced aerial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Lumira_E40I50 was designed and engineered to eliminate reliance on germanium, a critical mineral for defence electronics and long-wave infrared imaging.

Designed and manufactured in India, Lumira bypasses the global germanium supply chain, riddled by ongoing export restrictions and price volatility. India is currently 100% import dependent, and geopolitically motivated trade restrictions have caused prices to shoot more than 3 times since mid-2023.

“We made a deliberate decision early to design and engineer a germanium-free infrared imaging system. By eliminating any dependence on its use for thermal imaging, we’ve developed a system that’s resilient not only to supply chain disruptions but also enables scalable, cost-effective domestic manufacturing,” said Sanjay Kumar, Co-founder of EON Space Labs.

Lumira delivers real-time Edge AI detection and classification capabilities that can detect humans from a distance of up to 2 kms and vehicles at 8 kms. The complete suite includes 40X optical zoom, a long-wave infrared (LWIR) thermal sensor, and gimbal. Weight as per specs ranges from 800g to 2.2kg, making it suitable as a plug and play payload for compact UAVs, drones, aerostats and eVTOLS, that engineered to MIL-STD-810H standards, and capable of performing in extreme temperatures from -20°C to +55°C.

 

Cofounders of EON Space Labs (Left to Right, Punit Badeka, Sanjay Kumar, Manoj Kumar Gaddam)

“Lumira is much easier to manufacture domestically at scale and has global export potential. The future of military-grade imaging relies on innovations that combine advanced performance, mission endurance, and payload flexibility, with a zero-compromise mindset on technological sovereignty," added Punit Badeka, Co-founder of EON Space Labs.

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has forced Israel, accounting for almost 15% of India’s defence imports, to temporarily halt critical exports that include missiles, UAVs, radars, sensors, electro-optics and EW systems. EON Space Labs is also readying the launch of a ground-based ISR platform, named Raven, by mid-2026, to address the present-day reality of asymmetric warfare, driven by the threat of loitering munitions and kamikaze attack drones.

Exfinity Venture Partners Announces Partial Exit from CloudSEK, Delivering 13x Returns

Exfinity Venture Partners, an early-stage investor in Deep-Tech & B2B tech, has announced a partial exit from its investment in cybersecurity platform CloudSEK, delivering a 13x multiple on invested capital (MOIC) and an internal rate of return (IRR) of more than 40%. The transaction was executed as a secondary sale to existing investors, while Exfinity continues to retain a meaningful ownership stake in the company.

Exfinity was the first institutional investor in CloudSEK, backing the company during its pre-Series A round and supporting its vision of building a predictive, intelligence-led cybersecurity platform at a time when the market was still largely oriented around reactive threat detection. Since then, CloudSEK has evolved into a comprehensive AI-driven threat intelligence platform, helping enterprises proactively identify and disrupt cyber threats across digital risk, attack surface, and supply chain layers. At its core, the platform models cybersecurity not as isolated alerts but as connected attack paths across identity, exposure, and trust relationships-enabling organizations to predict and disrupt attacks before execution.

CloudSEK has demonstrated strong commercial momentum, having recently crossed USD 15 million in ARR and consistent year-on-year growth. The company has increasingly established itself as a global cybersecurity partner, with over 60% of its net new revenue driven from international markets and the United States emerging as its fastest-growing region. Its customer base includes leading enterprises across banking, telecom, aviation, and digital platforms, reflecting strong product-market fit in complex, large-scale environments.

In early 2025 the company had raised over $20 million across its Series B rounds, including participation from global investors such as Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) and Connecticut Innovations Fund (State of Connecticut Fund). Its strategic relationship with Commvault is expected to significantly strengthen CloudSEK’s global go-to-market motion, particularly in the US, enabling deeper enterprise penetration and accelerating its next phase of growth.

The rise of AI-native threats is fundamentally reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, with attackers increasingly leveraging autonomous systems to identify and exploit vulnerabilities across interconnected environments. CloudSEK’s platform is designed for this new paradigm, shifting enterprises from reactive detection to predictive resilience by using AI to simulate, validate, and disrupt attack paths before they materialize. This positioning places the company at the forefront of the next generation of cybersecurity infrastructure.

CloudSEK also represents a compelling example of reverse innovation, built and refined in India and now solving mission-critical cybersecurity challenges for enterprises globally. With

R&D anchored in India and a growing international footprint, the company exemplifies the emergence of India-origin deep-tech platforms scaling successfully across global markets.

“CloudSEK is one of the clearest examples of what Indian deep-tech can achieve on the global stage. Our early conviction in Rahul and his team has been validated by the company’s ARR trajectory, enterprise client quality, and now, by the confidence of a global strategic player like Commvault. This is a calibrated partial exit - we remain invested and excited about what comes next,” said Chinnu Senthilkumar, Managing Partner at Exfinity Venture Partners.

“Exfinity was our first institutional investor and backed us at a time when few were willing to take a bet on a cybersecurity platform emerging from India. Beyond capital, they have been a true partner, supporting us across early customer introductions, follow-on fundraising, and strategic direction as we scaled globally. This journey reflects what long-term, hands-on venture partnership should look like, and we are excited to continue building the next phase together” added Rahul Sasi, Founder & CEO at CloudSEK. 

This transaction marks the latest in a series of liquidity events for Exfinity’s 2016 vintage Fund II, including full exits from Kinara.ai and Locus, and a prior partial exit from Pixis. The fund has already crossed key DPI milestones through these exits, and this secondary adds further distributions to Limited Partners, while retaining meaningful upside across the remaining portfolio. These outcomes reinforce Exfinity’s belief in building globally competitive deep-tech companies from India.

About Exfinity Ventures

Exfinity Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on backing category-defining startups in deep-tech, enterprise technology, semiconductor, AI, and frontier technology sectors. The firm invests in companies building globally relevant technologies from India and has backed several high-impact startups across enterprise and industrial innovation.

To know more about Exfinity, visit https://www.exfinityventures.com/

How AI Video Style Transfer Turns One Shoot Into Ten Stories

Content creation used to be a numbers game — the more budget and people you had, the more content you could produce. That equation has fundamentally changed. AI video style transfer is quietly becoming one of the most powerful tools in a modern creator's arsenal, letting individuals and small teams produce content at a scale that would have required entire production departments just a few years ago. Here's how to actually use it to your advantage.

What Is AI Video Style Transfer?

Think of it this way: you shoot one piece of raw footage, and then use AI to spin it into ten different visual styles — a gritty documentary look, a vibrant anime aesthetic, a moody noir finish, a clean corporate feel. One shoot, ten pieces of content. That's the scaling power people are starting to wake up to.

AI video style transfer is the process of applying a specific visual style — a color palette, artistic aesthetic, cinematic look, or animation style — to existing video footage. Instead of reshooting content every time you need a different look, you feed your existing footage into an AI system and let it do the heavy lifting.

Why Style Transfer Is a Game-Changer for Content Teams

The traditional content production bottleneck isn't ideas — it's execution. Most creators have more ideas than they have time, budget, or bandwidth to produce. AI video style transfer attacks that bottleneck directly.

Here's where the real efficiency gains show up. Repurposing becomes effortless. A single product video can be restyled for different audience segments, platforms, or seasonal campaigns without going back to the shoot. Brand consistency becomes easier to maintain because you can apply a defined visual style across all content systematically rather than relying on manual editing judgment. And testing becomes cheaper — instead of producing multiple versions of a campaign from scratch, you generate stylistic variations from one master clip and see what resonates.

For social media teams in particular, this is transformative. The demand for fresh, platform-native content is relentless. Style transfer lets you meet that demand without burning out your creative team or blowing your production budget.

How to Build a Style Transfer Workflow with AI

Scaling with AI style transfer isn't just about having access to the right tools — it's about building a repeatable process around them. Here's a practical framework.

Start with a content library, not individual pieces. The scaling benefit of style transfer multiplies when you apply it to a library of footage rather than one-off clips. Invest time upfront in building a bank of raw, unprocessed video assets — product footage, lifestyle clips, talking head recordings, B-roll — that you can continuously draw from and restyle.

Define your style palette before you start generating. Know what visual identities you're working with. If you're managing content for a brand, document the specific aesthetic parameters — color grading direction, texture preferences, animation style — so that every style transfer output aligns with established brand guidelines rather than drifting into inconsistency.

Use a platform that centralizes your tools. Jumping between five different apps to complete one content workflow kills the efficiency you're trying to build. This is where Pollo AI genuinely earns its place in a scaling workflow. It brings together a powerful suite of AI video and image generation tools — including style transfer capabilities — in one place, and it has a video creator app so you can keep your workflow moving whether you're at your desk or not. For teams and solo creators who need to move fast without sacrificing output quality, having everything accessible in one platform makes a measurable difference

Batch your generations. Rather than generating one styled video at a time, prepare multiple clips and run them through your style transfer process in batches. This keeps your output pipeline full without requiring constant hands-on attention.

Matching Style Transfer to Platform Strategy

Different platforms reward different visual languages, and AI style transfer lets you speak all of them without producing content from scratch for each one.

For TikTok and Instagram Reels, high-contrast, saturated, visually dynamic styles tend to perform well. AI style transfer can push your footage in that direction quickly, giving raw clips the punchy energy that short-form audiences respond to. For YouTube, a more cinematic, polished aesthetic often works better — a different style applied to the same source footage. For LinkedIn, clean, professional, and restrained visual treatment signals credibility. One piece of footage, three platform-specific style treatments, three distinct pieces of content.

This kind of platform-aware style strategy used to require a skilled colorist and editor for every variation. Now it's a prompt and a generation queue.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

A few patterns consistently hold creators back when they try to scale with AI style transfer.

Over-relying on a single style is the most common one. The whole point of style transfer is variety and adaptability — if you're applying the same look to everything, you're not using the tool to its potential. Neglecting source footage quality is another. Style transfer enhances and transforms, but it can't rescue genuinely poor footage. Your raw material still needs to be decent — good lighting, stable framing, clean audio if applicable — for the AI to have something worth working with.

And finally, treating every generation as final output without review leads to inconsistent quality hitting your channels. AI tools are fast, but they still benefit from a human eye before anything goes public.

The Bigger Picture: Content at Scale Is Now a Realistic Goal

Not long ago, scaling content production meant hiring more people, spending more money, or accepting lower quality. AI video style transfer has broken that trade-off. You can now produce more content, in more visual styles, for more platforms, with a smaller team and a leaner budget — without the output looking like it was made on a shoestring.

The creators and brands that are building these workflows now are going to have a significant head start as the tools continue to improve. The technology is already capable enough to make a real difference in your production output today. The question isn't whether AI style transfer is worth exploring — it's whether you can afford to keep ignoring it while your competitors don't.

Start small, build your asset library, find the right platform, and let the workflow compound. The scale will follow.

India’s L&T Semiconductor Joins imec to Drive Global Automotive Chiplet Innovation

L&T Semiconductor Technologies (LTSCT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, has officially joined imec’s global Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP), marking India’s entry into a cutting-edge semiconductor collaboration focused on modular chiplet architectures for next-generation vehicles.

Key Highlights of the Collaboration

• Program: imec’s Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP)
• Objective: Develop chiplet-based architectures and advanced packaging technologies for automotive electronics.
• Focus Areas:
  • Safety-critical computing
  • High-speed die-to-die connectivity
  • Robust testing and monitoring across the semiconductor lifecycle
• Leadership: Dr. Sandeep Kumar, CEO of LTSCT, emphasized chiplets as a fundamental shift in automotive system integration.

Why Chiplets Matter for Automotive

Traditional monolithic SoCs (System-on-Chips) are struggling to meet the demands of:

• ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems)
• Software-defined vehicles (SDVs)
• Next-gen infotainment systems

Chiplets—modular silicon blocks optimized for specific functions—integrated via 2.5D and 3D packaging offer:

• Higher compute performance per watt
• Faster time-to-market
• Greater supply chain resilience
• Scalability and cost efficiency

Strategic Importance for India

• Global Positioning: Strengthens India’s role in the semiconductor ecosystem under the India Semiconductor Mission.
• Standardization Role: Contributes to reference architectures and interoperability standards.
• Industry Impact: Positions India as a contributor to global automotive semiconductor innovation.

Comparative Context

Factor	Traditional SoC	Chiplet-Based Design
Integration	Monolithic, single die	Modular, multiple dies
Performance Scaling	Limited by die size	Flexible, scalable per function
Supply Chain	Vendor-dependent	Multi-vendor interoperability
Cost Efficiency	High for advanced nodes	Lower via modular reuse
Reliability	Challenged in SDVs	Enhanced with safety partitions

Risks & Challenges

• Standardization: Success depends on industry-wide alignment around interoperable chiplet standards.Cost & p: Developing chiplet ecosystems independently is prohibitively expensive.
• Technology Transfer: Effective collaboration between imec, LTSCT, and global partners is critical.

L&T Semiconductor Technologies’ entry into imec’s Automotive Chiplet Program is a landmark step for India’s semiconductor ambitions, positioning the country as a contributor to global automotive innovation while advancing modular, scalable chiplet architectures for future vehicles.

The core purpose of imec’s Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP) is to accelerate the transition from traditional monolithic system‑on‑chips to modular chiplet architectures in vehicles. It is designed to create standardized reference designs, interoperability frameworks, and reliability models that allow multiple vendors to contribute chiplets which can be seamlessly integrated into automotive systems. By doing so, ACP reduces development costs, shortens time‑to‑market, and ensures that advanced computing platforms for cars—covering safety, connectivity, and infotainment—can scale efficiently while meeting stringent automotive reliability standards.

In essence, ACP is about building a collaborative ecosystem where automakers, semiconductor firms, and technology providers co‑develop the foundation for software‑defined, high‑performance vehicles powered by chiplets rather than single, monolithic chips.

In essence, ACP is about building a collaborative ecosystem where automakers, semiconductor firms, and technology providers co‑develop the foundation for software‑defined, high‑performance vehicles powered by chiplets rather than single, monolithic chips.