Voltagen Innovator Newtrace Raises $6.3M to Cut Green Hydrogen Costs

Newtrace, a deeptech startup developing high-performance electrode and electrolyzer technology for green hydrogen production, has raised ₹56.93 crore ($6.3 million) in its Pre-Series A round, led by HDFC Bank Limited and MITSUI SUMITOMO INSURANCE Venture Capital, with participation from Peak XV’s Surge, Aavishkaar Capital, Speciale Invest, Micelio Technology Fund, and angel investors Manish Prataprai Gandhi and Renu Manish Gandhi.

Green hydrogen is emerging as a critical pillar of global decarbonization and is the only scalable clean fuel capable of replacing fossil fuels across sectors such as steel, refining, fertilizers, chemicals, and heavy transport. The global green hydrogen market is projected to reach $38.1 billion by 2029 and expand to $1.4 trillion annually by 2050. Yet today, less than 1 percent of the world’s hydrogen is green, with high costs remaining the biggest barrier.

Green hydrogen currently costs $4 to $10 per kilogram, more than double the cost of conventional grey hydrogen. A significant portion of this cost and inefficiency originates in the electrolyzer stack, particularly the electrode, where most performance losses occur.

At the same time, India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission has set a target of producing 5 million metric tonnes of green hydrogen annually by 2030, supported by ₹19,744 crore in government incentives. However, India currently lacks a domestic supply of high-performance electrolyzer electrodes, creating both a strategic vulnerability and a major opportunity for indigenous innovation.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Bengaluru, Newtrace has developed Voltagen, a proprietary advanced electrode technology designed for alkaline water electrolyzers. Voltagen improves energy efficiency, extends system lifetime, and reduces overall hydrogen production costs. Designed as a drop-in replacement for existing electrodes, Voltagen enables electrolyzer manufacturers and hydrogen producers to upgrade performance without redesigning their systems. Newtrace has also commercialized membraneless electrolyzer technology as part of its broader platform.

Newtrace primarily serves electrolyzer OEMs, green hydrogen project developers, and industrial gas companies. Its technology is positioned to support India’s rapidly expanding electrolyzer manufacturing ecosystem, as well as global customers seeking higher efficiency and more reliable supply chains.

Voltagen is built on three core technology pillars: a high-performance catalytic architecture engineered at the micro and nanoscale to improve efficiency, a durable coating system that ensures long operating life under industrial conditions, and a scalable manufacturing process designed for commercial production. These innovations reduce energy consumption per kilogram of hydrogen produced, extend electrode life, and create a domestically available alternative to imported components.

Newtrace was founded by Prasanta Sarkar and Rochan Sinha, who bring deep expertise in electrochemistry, materials science, and industrial scale-up. The company operates from a 30,000 square foot technology center in Bengaluru and is supported by a multidisciplinary team of more than 45 engineers and scientists. It holds multiple patent applications and has received recognition under India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission. The company has also presented its technology to global audiences, including a showcase before Narendra Modi during National Startup Day 2026.

Newtrace Team 

“Green hydrogen’s cost problem is fundamentally a materials and manufacturing challenge,” said Prasanta Sarkar, CEO and Co-Founder of Newtrace. “Voltagen represents a new materials foundation that enables the efficiency and durability required to make green hydrogen cost competitive. This funding allows us to transition from proving the science to scaling manufacturing.”

“We built Newtrace to address the most critical and underinvested component of the electrolyzer stack,” said Rochan Sinha, CTO and Co-Founder of Newtrace. “Our focus now is on translating our technology into reliable, scalable manufacturing that can serve the global hydrogen economy.”

The newly raised capital will support pilot-scale manufacturing, customer validation and supply agreements, and expansion of manufacturing and engineering capabilities. Newtrace expects to begin initial commercial deliveries of Voltagen electrodes within the next 12 months.

About Newtrace:

Newtrace is a climate-tech startup developing and commercializing advanced electrode & stack technology for hydrogen electrolyzers . The vision we swear by is simple - to decarbonize the world through innovation, leaving a cleaner, greener, sustainable future for generations to come. By engineering high-performance electrodes at scale, Newtrace is working to make green hydrogen production economically viable and accelerate the global transition to clean energy. The company combines deep expertise in electrochemistry with scalable manufacturing to address one of the critical cost barriers in the hydrogen economy.

Consumer AI Startup Companion Labs Raises $2.5M to Create Interactive, Local‑Language Entertainment Experiences in India

Companion Labs, a consumer AI company building interactive, entertainment-led experiences for India’s vernacular and culturally diverse audiences, today announced it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Peak XV’s Surge, with participation from All in Capital, UntitledVC, DeVC and many angels.

The announcement follows Companion Labs’ participation at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi last week, where the company was featured at the summit’s flagship Impact AI PitchFest, a platform spotlighting high-potential early-stage AI startups. Companion Labs was among a select group of companies backed by Peak XV at the event, highlighting growing investor conviction in founders building AI-native products designed specifically for India’s next wave of internet users.

Companion Labs operates at the intersection of AI and entertainment, creating immersive, character-driven experiences that allow users to explore alternate lives, careers, and aspirations through AI-powered narratives. Rather than positioning AI primarily as a productivity tool, the company treats AI as a creative medium, enabling people to “live” parallel lives in richly contextual worlds shaped by language, culture, and personal ambition.

The company is building from the ground up for India, with experiences designed to reflect the linguistic, cultural, and social nuances of Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 audiences. Companion Labs is focused on vernacular languages including Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, and Bengali, targeting a young, aspirational, and digitally native population for whom entertainment has historically driven the fastest adoption of new technology.

This focus aligns with a broader shift highlighted at the India AI Impact Summit, where founders and investors pointed to consumer-facing, population-scale AI products built in local languages as a key driver of India’s AI opportunity.

Companion Labs was founded by Akshay Jhanwar and Ajit Pol, who bring complementary experience across consumer internet, gaming, and entertainment. Ajit previously held roles at Flipkart, Leap, and in gaming, while Akshay spent over four years at Cred. The founding insight emerged from their early experimentation with global AI character platforms, which they found were largely Western in tone and context, limiting their resonance with Indian users.

“India’s next wave of AI adoption will be driven by consumer experiences that feel native to our languages, cultures, and aspirations,” said Akshay Jhanwar, Co-founder, Companion Labs. “We are building AI as a new form of entertainment, where people can explore alternate paths and identities in ways that feel deeply personal and rooted in their own context.”

Ajit Pol, Co-founder, Companion Labs, added, “Entertainment has always been the gateway to mass technology adoption in India. With AI, storytelling becomes interactive and personalised at scale. Our ambition is to build category-defining consumer AI experiences from India, for India.”

Companion Labs will use the funding to accelerate product development, invest in AI capabilities, and continue refining its product as it works toward product-market fit. Over the long term, the company aims to define a new category of AI-native entertainment built specifically for India’s vernacular internet users.

About Companion Labs

Companion Labs is a consumer AI company building interactive, entertainment-led experiences tailored for India’s vernacular and culturally diverse audiences. Founded by Akshay Jhanwar and Ajit Pol, the company uses AI-powered characters and narratives to let users explore alternate lives, careers, and aspirations in deeply local contexts. Built from India for India, Companion Labs reflects a broader shift toward consumer AI experiences that prioritise language, culture, and storytelling over generic utility.

Fashion Quick Commerce Startup ZILO raises $15.3 Million In Series A round led by Peak XV Partners

• Co-founded by ex-Flipkart and Myntra executives Padmakumar Pal & Bhavik Jhaveri, ZILO is a fashion quick commerce platform that delivers on-trend styles from 200+ brands in under 60 minutes-with home trials and instant returns.

Fashion quick commerce startup ZILO has raised $15.3 million (Rs. 140 crore) in a Series A funding round led by Peak XV Partners, which invested $8 million. Existing investors InfoEdge Ventures and Chiratae Ventures doubled down in the round with $2.5 million each. This round also witnessed participation from Alteria Capital, Stride Ventures and angel investors including Lalit Keshre (Founder and CEO, Groww), Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), Sachin Oswal (Founder, Orginity), Ayyappan R (Founder, FirstClub), Abhishek Bansal (CEO, Shadowfax), Sreevathsa Prabhakar (Founder, Servify) & Preeta Sukhtankar (Equity partner, Foxtale & Luma Fertility).

ZILO Founders

The announcement comes soon after ZILO partnered with celebrity stylist and fashion editor Anaita Shroff Adajania as Style Director and equity partner, a strategic collaboration aimed at enhancing curated fashion experiences on the platform. Founded with a vision to reimagine fashion shopping for the quick commerce era, ZILO is building a vertically integrated model focused on fast delivery, wide selection and superior customer experience.

The company plans to utilise the fresh capital to scale operations, strengthen brand building, invest in technology, expand to new markets and build an elevated customer experience, it said.

"This round is a strong validation of our belief that fashion and speed don't have to be trade-offs. With the backing of all our existing partners, and the creative leadership of Anaita, we're building a new category where curated fashion meets the immediacy customers now expect. The capital will help us scale thoughtfully, deepen our tech and deliver a truly elevated fashion experience at quick-commerce speed" said Padmakumar Pal, Co-founder & CEO, ZILO.

"We're putting fashion shopping back in the right order - replacing endless scrolls with adequately relevant choices, expert-styled looks, the convenience of Home Trials, and the reliability of super fast delivery. The confidence our partners have shown in us strongly validates the vision. This capital will help us accelerate geographic expansion, deepen our platform and technology investments, and build a vertically integrated, fashion-first supply chain designed for speed, selection, and service." said Bhavik Jhaveri, Co-founder & CIO, ZILO.

Over the next 12-14 months, the funding will help ZILO deepen its capabilities and expand its market presence, the company said. While quick commerce has scaled rapidly across categories, the fashion playbook in the segment is still evolving.

Kriti Gupta, Vice President at Peak XV Partners added, "We believe the preferences of Indian customers are evolving quickly and fashion continues to be shopped the same way. ZILO has the potential to transform the customer experience and build a category defining platform."

"ZILO's next round is an early validation of our vertical quick commerce thesis and the belief that premium fashion shopping experience is still broken and offline. The Founder's experience has

helped ZILO leapfrog in early traction to take on larger established players in Mumbai", says Anoop Menon, Consumertech lead at Chiratae Ventures.

"Our continued investment in Zilo reflects our conviction in the emergence of vertical fashion quick commerce and the growing demand for convenience-led fashion discovery. We have strong conviction in the team's ability to build a scaled, differentiated business with best in class unit economics" Kitty Agarwal, Partner at InfoEdge Ventures. 

ZILO said the funding will enable it to offer one of the largest selections from top fashion brands under a single roof in a quick commerce format, strengthen its position in Mumbai, and expand to a few additional cities. The company will also continue investing in technology and teams to further improve customer experience

About ZILO:

ZILO is India's next-generation fashion-tech platform, redefining on-demand style with convenience, curation, and speed. Founded by ex-Flipkart and ex-Myntra leaders, ZILO delivers on-trend outfits from over 200 national, international, and D2C brands in under 60 minutes, with features like Home Trials, instant returns, and personalised style recommendations. Leveraging a hybrid supply model of dark stores and brand outlets, ZILO ensures fresh, in-season collections and a seamless shopping experience for urban consumers, combining the best of online convenience with offline flexibility

PowerUp Money Raises $12M in Series A to Expand Access to High-Quality Mutual Fund Advisory Across India

PowerUp Money, a mutual fund advisory wealthtech platform, today announced that it has raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by Peak XV, with participation from existing investors Accel, Blume Ventures, and Kae Capital, who doubled down on their earlier commitments.

Prateek Jindal, Founder

The round also saw continued backing from 8i Ventures and DevC, and comes just six months after the company raised $7.2 million in seed funding.

India has witnessed a sharp rise in mutual fund adoption over the past decade, with nearly 60 million investors now participating in mutual funds and SIP inflows at an all-time high. However, access to high-quality, unbiased investment advice has not scaled at the same pace. Many investors continue to rely on informal advice or short-term performance indicators, often resulting in suboptimal long-term outcomes.

Founded in 2024 by Prateek Jindal, PowerUp Money is building a research-led, zero-commission mutual fund advisory platform to make high-quality, unbiased investment advice accessible to millions of Indians at a fraction of traditional costs. As a SEBI-registered Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), the platform ensures that recommendations remain fully aligned with investors’ long-term wealth creation goals.

The PowerUp Money app enables users to review their mutual fund portfolios free of cost and assess portfolio health and performance. Within eight months of launch, the platform has onboarded over 5 lakh users and is currently tracking more than ₹65,000 crore in assets, indicating strong early user engagement with the platform.

PowerUp Money’s flagship offering, PowerUp Elite, delivers personalised mutual fund advisory directly through the app for an annual fee of ₹999. Designed for serious investors, the subscription covers fund selection, portfolio reviews, rebalancing, asset allocation, and end-to-end portfolio guidance backed by institution-grade research. Since launch, PowerUp Elite has onboarded over 25,000 paid members, emerging as one of India’s fastest-growing subscription-led mutual fund advisory offerings.

“High-quality, unbiased mutual fund advice should not be a privilege,” said Prateek Jindal, Founder & CEO, PowerUp Money. “As more Indians participate in mutual funds, the real gap lies in access to credible, research-led advice that helps investors make disciplined, long-term decisions. This fundraise enables us to strengthen our advisory and research capabilities, scale PowerUp Elite, and launch PowerUp Infinite, as we work towards building India’s most trusted, zero-commission mutual fund advisory platform and help millions of investors invest with clarity and confidence.”

Commenting on the investment, Navendu Sharma, Principal at Peak XV, said,

India needs a technology-led platform to deliver financial advice at population scale. Mutual funds are the natural gateway to financial assets for mass and affluent Indians. PowerUp has a clever yet simple approach to scaling MF advisory. We are excited to see the team deepen their MF suite and over time build the dominant wealth and asset management platform for the region.

Commenting on the company’s progress, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, said

What PowerUp Money has built with Elite is particularly compelling. They’ve successfully productised high-quality mutual fund advisory—making it accessible at scale while retaining a high degree of personalisation and quality. That balance is extremely difficult to achieve in wealth management.”
The company is also preparing to launch PowerUp Infinite, a fully managed investment advisory product offering dedicated 1:1 advisory, goal planning, and personalised investment strategies delivered in a transparent and unbiased manner. Together, PowerUp Elite and PowerUp Infinite will form a comprehensive advisory stack, spanning app-first personalised guidance to fully managed wealth solutions led by expert advisors.

With this fundraise, PowerUp Money plans to further strengthen its research and advisory capabilities, scale PowerUp Elite, launch PowerUp Infinite, and invest in financial literacy and investor education initiatives. Over the next three years, the company aims to onboard 10 million users, deepening its role in shaping the future of retail wealth management in India.

About PowerUp Money

PowerUp Money is redefining mutual fund investing for India’s top 100 million investors. With a mission to make quality, unbiased investment advisory accessible to every Indian, the platform combines high-quality research with deep consumer insights to deliver a simple, intuitive, app-first experience. Founded by fintech veteran Prateek Jindal, PowerUp Money helps retail investors across India invest with clarity, confidence, and discipline. The company is backed by Peak XV, Accel, Blume Ventures, Kae Capital, DevC, and 8i Ventures. Website: www.powerup.money

Lighthouse Canton Secures $40 Mn in Strategic Funding Led by Peak XV Partners to Power Its Next Phase of Growth

Global investment institution, Lighthouse Canton, today announces a USD 40 million strategic investment round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Nextinfinity (investment holding company of Shyam Maheshwari - Founding Partner of SSG Capital, later Ares SSG). Qatar Insurance Company (QIC), an early investor in the company, continues to support its growth.

Founded in 2014, Lighthouse Canton has grown organically managing over USD 5 billion in assets across Singapore, India, the UAE, and the United Kingdom. Over the past decade, the company has built a reputation for disciplined investment management and a client-first approach that has made it a trusted partner for entrepreneurs, families, and institutions across regions.

This is Lighthouse Canton’s first external fundraise, undertaken to accelerate the next phase of its growth journey. The capital will be deployed to enhance technology infrastructure, attract senior talent, expand its product capabilities, and pursue geographic growth opportunities across high-potential markets.

“This is a defining milestone for us,” said Shilpi Chowdhary, Group CEO of Lighthouse Canton. “We have built Lighthouse Canton with an institutional mindset independently. For more than ten years we have been guided by a long-term vision of creating a world-class investment platform. With Peak XV and our strategic partners, we are deepening our capabilities, institutionalizing further, and positioning ourselves for the next decade of growth.”

Lighthouse Canton’s wealth management business provides personalized, family, wealth and business solutions for high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, and family offices, while its asset management arm offers institutional-grade strategies across public and private markets. Lighthouse Canton’s strong regional presence and focus on disciplined execution have enabled it to serve clients across complex cross-border environments with agility and trust.

This strategic funding marks a new chapter in Lighthouse Canton’s journey and one that focuses on scale, innovation, and institutional depth, while continuing to deliver exceptional value to clients.

About Lighthouse Canton

Lighthouse Canton is a global investment institution with wealth and asset management capabilities. We employ over 200 experienced professionals across our offices in Singapore, Dubai, India, and London, and currently oversee over US$ 5 bn worth of assets under management and advisory. Lighthouse Canton creates value through innovative investment solutions for accredited private clients, institutional investors, and an ecosystem of founders and entrepreneurs globally.

Lighthouse Canton’s Asset Management business comprises strong internal product capabilities in hedge funds, private equity, traditional fundamental analysis, investing through multiple strategies in real estate private equity, private credit, venture capital, growth debt, public equities, and global macros.

Its Wealth Management business caters to accredited investors including corporates, ultra-high net worth individuals, families and family offices, founders, and entrepreneurs, to help with their personal and business investments, estates, and philanthropic needs, providing them tailored investment advisory, portfolio management, treasury, business & family office solutions.

Lighthouse Canton Pte Ltd is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). Lighthouse Canton Capital (DIFC) Pte Ltd is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (“DFSA”). LC Capital India Pte Ltd is regulated by Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”). Lighthouse Canton UK Limited is regulated by Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”)

For more information visit www.lighthouse-canton.com

About Peak XV

Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) is a leading venture capital firm investing across India, Southeast Asia and beyond. Over the last 19 years of operations in the region, Peak XV has grown to manage approximately USD 9 billion in capital across 13 funds and invested in over 400 companies.

The portfolio has seen 31 IPOs and several successful M&As till date.

To know more, please visit: www.peakxv.com

VoidZero Raises $12.5M Series A to Launch Vite+, the Unified JavaScript Toolchain

VoidZero, the company behind the next generation of open-source JavaScript tooling, today announced its successful fund raise of $12.5 million in a Series A round led by Accel, with participation from Peak XV Partners, Sunflower Capital, and notable angel investors including Koen Bok (Framer) and Eric Simons (StackBlitz). The funding will accelerate the commercial release of Vite+ (VoidZero’s unified toolchain), fuel team expansion, and deepen investment in its open-source projects.

JavaScript powers nearly every modern web experience, yet its ecosystem has grown increasingly fragmented. As applications scale in complexity, inconsistent tooling leads to productivity loss, higher maintenance and hiring costs, and growing security and performance risks. With 28 million developers worldwide and growing, every inefficiency can translate into significant challenges, amplified by recent supply chain attacks and performance bottlenecks.

Vite+ addresses these challenges by seamlessly combining development server, production build, testing, linting, formatting, project scaffolding, and monorepo management into a single, coherent command-line interface. Built atop the company’s open-source projects - Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, and Oxc - Vite+ ensures full compatibility with industry standards while delivering unmatched speed, consistency and usability. Vite alone is downloaded 36 million times weekly, while Vitest, the test runner, reaches 16 million downloads per week. Evan You, Founder and CEO of VoidZero said, “Our mission is simple: make JavaScript developers dramatically more productive. With Vite+, we’re building a unified, high-performance toolchain that developers can trust across every stage of their workflow. This funding allows us to bring that vision to life faster while supporting the sustainability of our open-source ecosystem.”

This round of fund-raising marks Peak XV Partners’ strengthened support for developer innovation in India and the wider APAC region. With over 11.4 million developers and more than 440,000 organisations on GitHub, India has one of the world’s fastest-growing communities of developers. This growth, along with India’s vibrant SaaS and startup ecosystem, makes it a key market for next-generation developer tools like Vite+.

VoidZero envisions Vite+ becoming the ubiquitous toolkit for JavaScript developers from startups to the enterprise. By simplifying development, the company aims to empower more developers to focus on building meaningful products instead of worrying about tooling.

The company’s open-source tools already power products at OpenAI, Shopify, Stripe, Cloudflare, Hugging Face, and Mercedes-Benz. Its projects earned multiple accolades in the 2024 State of JS Survey, and it maintains design partnerships with elite engineering teams including Framer and Linear.

About VoidZero

Founded in 2023, VoidZero is a globally remote company with 17 employees, building the next generation of JavaScript developer tools. Its mission is to make JavaScript developers more productive than ever before through unified, high-performance tooling. Website: voidzero.dev.

WizCommerce Raises $8M to Rebuild the $10T Wholesale Market with AI

WizCommerce, the AI-native sales and ecommerce platform for wholesale distributors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India), with participation from Blume Ventures, Z47, and Alpha Wave. The funding will fuel WizCommerce’s continued expansion across the U.S. and accelerate development of its AI-powered platform for sales, commerce, and B2B payments.

Founded by Divyaanshu Makkar (ex-Bessemer Venture Partners, ex-EY-Parthenon) and Vikas Garg (ex-Zomato), WizCommerce is modernizing the infrastructure behind the $10 trillion U.S. wholesale market, a space that still runs on spreadsheets, outdated portals, and manual order-taking.

The platform brings together sales reps, marketers, and buyers on one system, combining AI-powered quoting, intelligent storefronts, ERP integrations, lifestyle image generation, and embedded payments. Already, $100M+ in GMV flows through the WizCommerce network annually, with 700+ reps and 300K+ buyers using the platform across categories like home décor, lighting, and general merchandise.

“We’re building the stack wholesale should have had all along,” said Divyaanshu Makkar, CEO and co-founder of WizCommerce. “A few years from now, no one will be calling to check stock or emailing product photos. AI will handle the grunt work - what to sell, how to sell it, and all the admin work in between. Reps will close faster, ops teams will run lighter, and buyers will get a curated experience that feels effortless. That’s the future and it’s closer than people think. With this fundraise we plan to double down on AI and launch an AI workforce for distributors to automate both back office and front office operations.”

“What stands out is how consistently WizCommerce earns praise from both reps and buyers,” said Rishen Kapoor, VP at Peak XV. “Reps tell us it’s the tool they open first, and buyers appreciate the simpler ordering process. It’s uncommon to see a platform improve internal workflows and customer experience at once. With hundreds of reps and thousands of buyers already using it, WizCommerce is on track to become a core part of the wholesale tech stack.”

Rishen Kapoor added, “Wholesale is still largely run on legacy systems. WizCommerce is addressing that gap with an AI‑first product built for the industry’s day‑to‑day needs. Their early traction shows they’re well‑placed to lead the shift.”

Sajith Pai, Partner at Blume Ventures, said, “Div, Vikas, and the team at WizCommerce have built a product stack that U.S. wholesalers and distributors absolutely love, reflected in their rapid revenue growth. Thanks to a culture built around intense customer listening, a ship fast attitude leveraging AI tooling, they are able to rapidly launch and succeed with new products such as WizAI and WizStudio addressing key customer needs. The new round will help in continued acceleration on product development, and GTM efforts including expansion into adjacent verticals.”

WizCommerce is actively hiring across engineering, AI, product, and GTM functions, with hubs in the U.S. and India.

Fintech Startup Ambak Raises $7 Mn in Funding Led by Peak XV Partners

• Founders are ex-leadership from Policybazaar, Paisabazaar, CarDekho, Freecharge by Axis Bank, HDFC Life and ZestMoney
• In just 12 months, Ambak has served 15,000+ home buyers and signed an official partnership with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to serve 35,000+ customers

Ambak, a technology-driven marketplace streamlining the home loan process, announces $7 million in funding through a combination of Seed and Pre-Series A funding. Leading investors include Peak XV’s Surge in the seed round, with Peak XV Partners doubling down for Pre-Series A, Advantedge VC, DeVC, and angel investors, who have significantly increased their stake in the company.

The founders, leaders from PB Fintech, Freecharge, CarDekho Group and ZestMoney who have built scaled platforms in insurance, car loans and unsecured lending, launched Ambak in January 2024, to improve customer and home seller experience in a fragmented, opaque and large ($160 Bn / annum) home finance market. Despite favourable government policies like the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the home loan process in India remains cumbersome, often confusing customers with over 150 financiers offering loans. Ambak simplifies this by providing a transparent, three-step process for selecting the right financier, supported by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and bank rule engines.

Within the first 12 months, Ambak has built their marketplace integrating with 50+ lenders, expanded distribution in 6 states and automated credit processes to serve the needs of 15,000+ customers and 3,000+ intermediaries including builders and brokers. They also signed an industry-first official partnership with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to serve 35,000+ customers over the next 12 months. This growth prompted their existing investors with Peak XV as the lead to infuse a further $3.7 Million in January 2025 to co-create new products, build AI tools and expand distribution to all major hubs in India.

"For a majority of Indians, buying a home is the biggest financial decision they will ever make, but access and affordability continue to be a significant hurdle. Despite 160+ lenders serving all types of customers & properties, customers find it hard to find the right lender and handle the process. Ambak’s mission is to distribute $20 billion in home finance annually in the next five years, while leading the charge to provide transparency and predictability to the home-buying experience," shared Raghuveer Malik, CEO of Ambak.

 

Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director, Peak XV shared, “Mortgages represent the largest market for credit in India. The founding team at Ambak come with strong relevant experience and we are impressed with their early execution. We believe they can leverage technology effectively to solve for various needs of borrowers, intermediaries and banks in the mortgage market.”

Ambak, which has quietly been building its presence and launched its app 12 months ago, has been making waves in the industry. The startup uses technology and integrations with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) services to serve both the customer & their lending partners offering a simple and assisted process for getting a home loan.

“We felt that the distribution of the secured retail lending space, in which home loans is the largest component, was riddled with lack of innovation despite lenders having made monumental upgrades in the last 5 years” said Rameshwar Gupta, CTO of Ambak who previously served as the CTO of Freecharge (By Axis Bank).

Ambak's Expansion and Innovation Goals

The newly raised funds will enable Ambak to expand its operations across 35 cities and serve 100,000+ customers, crossing $1 Billion in disbursements in FY26. To ensure it stays customer-obsessed, Ambak is strengthening its Loan Comparison tools, developing Vernacular AI bots for better customer outreach, and improving its AI/ML-based loan processing engine. The company is also co-creating products with financiers to expand options and deepen financial penetration across the country.

Leveraging Technology to Drive Change

Ambak’s platform integrates real-time data from lenders and employs AI-driven processes to reduce turnaround times and minimize customer confusion. By streamlining operations, Ambak aims to drive the adoption of customer-centric practices that promote transparency and affordability, ensuring a significant boost to the home finance sector by FY32.

Ambak is a fintech startup revolutionizing the home financing industry. By combining advanced technology with a customer-centric approach, AMBAK simplifies the mortgage process and helps individuals achieve their dream of homeownership. The platform leverages data analytics, AI-driven recommendations, and robust customer support to provide a transparent, efficient, and empowering experience. For more information, visit https://www.ambak.com/

Ethical Hackers Founded PingSafe Raises $3.3 Mn Seed Fund in Round Led By Peak XV Partners

Cyber security startup PingSafe, founded by ethical hackers — Anand Prakash and Nishant Mittal, has secured a $3.3 million seed funding in a round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India) along with participation of other investors, reported several media outlets.

Other investors who participated in this round include angel investors, Rahul Chari (PhonePe co-founder), Neeraj Arora, Saurya Prakash, Vivek Ramachandran (SquareX Founder), Gaurav Agarwal (Tata 1mg co-founder & CTO), and early stage VC firm Tanglin Ventures.

In a media statement, PingSafe says that the freshly raised funds will ramp up global business development efforts in US and South-East Asian countries. With the Indian government bringing new regulations like Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) into law, along with the increasing cybersecurity risk faced by clients as they move to cloud, PingSafe is well positioned to serve the Indian cloud security market needs

Since rebranding this is Peak XV's second investment. Last month, Bengaluru-based spacetech startup Digantara secured $10 million from Peak XV.

Founded in 2021, PingSafe is a cloud security platform with a comprehensive knowledge of the attackers' modus-operandi. PingSafe helps businesses across various sizes and verticals transform cloud security and claims to eliminate all hidden and exploitable vulnerabilities at blazing-fast speed and scale.

Anand Prakash, the Co-Founder & CEO, is a renowned white hat hacker who ranked in the top 5 bug bounty hunters by companies like Meta, Uber, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. He has helped secure over 400+ leading companies and was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia - Enterprise Technology in 2017.

Space Tech Startup Digantara Raises $10 Mn in Series A Funding Led by Peak XV Partners

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) -incubated space technology company Digantara has raised $10 million in Series A funding round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia). Kalaari Capital also participated in this round, reported media outlets including Tech Crunch and Mint.

This is notably the first space-tech investment by the Sequoia and also the first official funding announcement since restructuring from Sequoia India.

Founded in December 2018 by Indian engineers Anirudh Sharma, Rahul Rawat and Tanveer Ahmed, Digantara has raised $12.5 million till date, including the seed round of $2.5 million from Kalaari Capital in July 2021.

Digantara will use the freshly raised funds to build its commercial space situational awareness satellites, as part of its infrastructure as well as to expand its team and set up a new office in Bengaluru.

Digantara, which specializes in space weather and space debris-tracking, is building its space data mapping service. 

Digantara has successfully launched its second satellite named Pushan-Alpha onboard SpaceX's Transporter 6 mission on January 3.

Bengaluru-based Digantara is a space situational awareness company that is developing an end-to-end infrastructure to address the difficulties of space operations and space traffic management through its pioneering Space - Mission Assurance Platform a.k.a. Space-MAP, which will serve as a one stop solution for all space operations with products offered through a data feedback loop using multi modal data sets. This platform will be as powerful and sophisticated as Google Maps, serving as a foundational layer for space operations and astrodynamics research.

Digantara is presently working with the Indian space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to source satellite data, among others.

In January, Digantara was recognised as Winner under “Space” category by Startup India for their efforts towards building sovereign SSA capability at National Startup Awards 2022.