Sachin Tendulkar Invests in Metasports Interactive, the Company Behind the Game Hitwicket

Global cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar became a strategic investor in Metasports Interactive, a mobile-first competitive sports gaming company. With this partnership, the company looks to grow its flagship cricket strategy title, Hitwicket, to 100 million downloads within the next 3 years.

Founded by Kashyap Reddy and Keerti Singh, the game Hitwicket has built a player base of over 20 million users across 120 countries since its launch in 2020. The game has witnessed a 100% growth in revenue in the last 6 months, with players spending an average of 51 minutes a day in the game.

Hitwicket is a leading competitive multiplayer cricket game that is built around strategic decision-making and brings tactical thinking to competitive cricket gaming. This emphasis on cricketing strategy drew Sachin Tendulkar to the game and influenced his decision to invest in Metasports Interactive. Tendulkar features across Hitwicket’s in-game experiences, content and brand activations.

Talking about the strategic association, Sachin Tendulkar said, “Hitwicket stood out to me for how it brings the strategic thinking behind cricket into the game. Cricket has always involved reading the bowler, assessing the field and deciding the right approach for every ball. Hitwicket captures that decision-making, going beyond reflexes to recreate how a cricketer thinks in the middle. The game translates that strategic dimension into an engaging experience for players. I enjoyed playing the game, believe in what the team is building, and that makes the association feel natural.”

Kashyap Reddy, Co-Founder and CEO, Metasports Interactive

Commenting on the association, Kashyap Reddy, Co-Founder and CEO, Metasports Interactive, said, “Hitwicket has built a distinct proposition in cricket gaming by making strategic decision-making central to the experience, and Sachin Tendulkar recognised this unique difference. Interacting with Sachin Tendulkar is helping us understand how elite cricketers think on the field and further improve the game engagement. Our 20 million players, spending 51 min per day in the game, demonstrate the engagement this approach can drive. Tendulkar’s belief in what we’ve built, together with the growth capital behind us, lets us take cricket strategy to every cricket fan in the world.

The partnership follows the USD 20 million user acquisition funding by London-based Metica in April 2026. Hitwicket’s strong monetisation metrics, deep player retention, and the consistent quality of its user acquisition data gave Metica the confidence to deploy capital at scale. Hitwicket has grown from an Indian cricket game into a global strategy title.

About Metasports Interactive:

Metasports is a mobile-first competitive sports gaming company building multiplayer sports games designed for long-term engagement and global scale. Its flagship title Hitwicket launched in 2020 blends deep, skill-based gameplay with mass-market accessibility. Hitwicket is the only Made in India game with more than 97% of its revenue generated through in-app purchases in India and International markets. Today, users spend ~51 mins daily on Hitwicket globally, comparable to the time spent by Football fans in the #1 Grossing Football game and 15 mins more than on Candy Crush.

With a long-term vision to create category-defining sports gaming franchises, Metasports is focused on shaping the future of competitive sports gaming on mobile. Operating with a player-first, performance-driven approach, the company maintains a strong focus on product quality, scale, and global impact, underscoring that India can build world-class gaming companies beyond casual or service-led products. Metasports has raised USD 20 million in UA funding from Metica (London). The startup is also backed by renowned cricket commentator, Harsha Bhogle. The game, designed as a skill-first, competitive multiplayer experience, has grown to over 20 million players across 120+ countries.

Dispatch Network Raises ₹5 Crore Pre-Seed Round Led by Antler India to Boost Rider Earnings with AI-Powered Logistics

The Pune-based last-mile network is doubling its order volumes every month, with rider retention 80% better than the industry average.

Dispatch, a last-mile delivery network built around what a rider earns, has raised ₹5 crore pre-seed led by Antler India, with participation from angel investors Krishi Fagwani, founder of Thrive, Yashin Mahadevia and Parth Modwadhia. This is the company's first public funding announcement.

The problem

Every delivery app today has its own high-demand hours and likewise slack periods. The result is that riders spend much of their shift waiting or riding empty, up to 50% of their kilometres without an order. The rider pays for every one of those kilometres. Nobody pays the rider.

Dispatch's view is that the fleet that can sustainably pay riders the most will win supply, and the only way to pay more is to make every hour on the road more productive.

What Dispatch is building

Dispatch is building a foundation AI model for intracity logistics and mobility. It decides which order a rider should take next and where that rider should wait for the one after, sequencing work across platforms instead of reacting to one order at a time. Traditional fleets chase total order volume, while Dispatch is built to maximise what one rider can do. While other fleets let the rider choose which order they want to do, Dispatch, on the other hand, picks each order for every rider, which it says leads to better sequencing and a significant reduction in empty miles.

This approach has helped Dispatch outperform industry average rider retention numbers.

Dispatch’s Spatio-Temporal Foundation Model

The Large Logistics Spatio-Temporal Model is a foundation model for logistics and mobility, and it learns from viewing the city every minute with millions of parameters, unlike LLMs.

It assigns every order Dispatch delivers, and every decision, and what happened next, becomes training data.

Progress since the round

• 100,000+ deliveries since launch, doubling every month: 3,014 in June and 55,000 in October
• 3500 deliveries a day today.
• Two-thirds fewer empty miles
• Riders take home about 55% more a month, against the industry average.
• Rider retention is 80% better than the industry average.
• Launching the 2nd city, Mumbai, in November

Dispatch delivers for India's major food and quick-commerce platforms, including Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Instamart and BigBasket, and for hundreds of restaurants and stores, through its direct APIs and through ONDC.

"There's no chance of coming back empty-handed," said Rahul, 26, a Dispatch rider in Pune. "As soon as I come online, an order comes in fast; I don't have to go around empty looking for hotspots. I earn more because I save more."

What riders are saying

“Riders need more orders, but more importantly, they need the right next order. Every idle minute we remove goes back into a rider's earnings, and that's how we win supply. The last mile ecosystem is fundamentally challenged by design, with inefficiencies at every step. On one hand there is immense unmet demand due to rider shortages; on the other, riders ride up to 50% of their time empty, without an order. Every platform fights for supply; no one makes money. It's absurd. We're reimagining how the last mile works from the ground up; it needs to be fixed structurally across all stakeholders.”, Rajit Arya, Co-founder and CEO, Dispatch Network

“Most of the world's deliveries still run on rules someone wrote by hand. We're building the decision layer for last-mile delivery: which order, which rider, and where they should be next. Pune is our training ground, and every delivery makes the model sharper. The goal is simple: make every hour a rider spends on the road the best-paid hour they can find.”–Navneeth Kannan, Co-founder, Product and AI, Dispatch Network

“Most of last-mile delivery has been optimised for the platform. Rajit and Navneeth started from the rider, and that's what we backed. They've spent half a decade close to the people who actually make these deliveries, and in a few months' time, they've shown that a rider-first network can scale. If every hour on the road keeps getting more productive, supply will follow.” said, Nitin Sharma, Partner, Antler India

Use of funds

The funds will be used to grow the AI team behind LL[ST]M. Dispatch's next goal is 50,000 orders a day across five cities.

About Dispatch Network

Dispatch Network (Artem Network Private Limited) is a last-mile delivery network that uses proprietary AI to make every rider hour more productive. Co-founder Rajit Arya has worked in electric mobility since 2009 and has been working with delivery riders for the past 5 years. Co-founder Navneeth Kannan is a product architect and engineer with a decade in mobility systems. The company moved into last-mile delivery in 2026 and went live in Pune in June 2026.

PhysicsWallah’s School of Startups (PW SoS) Partners with Startup India (DPIIT) to Accelerate 25,000 Early-Stage Startups with Seed Funding and Incubation

PW SoS has signed an MoU with DPIIT under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry to scale India's regional startup ecosystem

PhysicsWallah School of Startups (PW SoS), the entrepreneurship wing of education company PhysicsWallah, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Startup India, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The two-year partnership aims to accelerate grassroots entrepreneurship, deep-tech innovation, and venture incubation across Tier-II, Tier-III cities, and rural Bharat, reaching aspiring and early-stage founders.

The joint initiative will deliver end-to-end support to early-stage ventures, essentially combining structured online and residential training, product prototyping guidance, incubation infrastructure, investor access, and early-stage seed capital.

To support founders at every stage, PW School of Startups is introducing a range of programmes tailored to their needs. PW UDYAMI offers a 90-day live online training programme and one year of mentorship to empower entrepreneurs from small towns and rural areas. Aarambh Immersion is a five-day residential programme focused on prototype development, pitch preparation and networking. For growth-stage ventures, the Growth Stage CEO Program will support 200 DPIIT-recognised startups across four hybrid cohorts, helping them prepare for growth funding. The six-month PW DeepTech Accelerator will provide selected high-potential ventures with access to rapid growth and funding. Early-stage innovators will also benefit from proof-of-concept opportunities, corporate pilots and seed investment through the annual National AI Startup Challenge & SeedX, as well as incubation support and seed grants at the UP Government-approved StartinUP Business Incubation Centre hosted by PW School of Startups.

“Supporting entrepreneurs beyond Tier-I cities is key to building a stronger startup ecosystem in India. Our partnership with PhysicsWallah School of Startups will help grassroots innovators access the resources, mentorship and infrastructure they need to turn their ideas into scalable, job-creating businesses across Bharat,”, said, Shri Ateesh Kumar Singh, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

“True empowerment means making knowledge, mentorship and funding accessible to aspiring entrepreneurs across Bharat. Through our partnership with DPIIT and Startup India, PW School of Startups aims to support aspiring founders, with initiatives like PW UDYAMI, Aarambh and deep-tech acceleration programmes to help turn ideas into successful businesses”, added, Rounaq Mustafa, Head of PW School of Startups.

PW SoS is also an accredited incubator under the StartInUP initiative by the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Through this partnership with DPIIT, the vertical aims to bring together PW’s entrepreneurial guidance with Startup India’s nationwide ecosystem network and startup outreach to strengthen regional innovation hubs across the country.

About PhysicsWallah (PW)

PhysicsWallah Limited (PW), an education platform, was founded in 2020 by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari. Headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, PW aims to facilitate education through online, offline, and hybrid platforms. Initially launched as a YouTube channel in 2014, PW now offers education to students through its native app, tech enabled offline and hybrid centres, and YouTube channels. PW offerings span various educational segments, including test preparation, a skilling vertical (PW Skills and Earners), coaching for higher education, and facilitating education abroad, with programs available in multiple vernacular languages. PhysicsWallah Limited was listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) and BSE Limited (Bombay Stock Exchange) on November 18, 2025.

About Startup India (DPIIT)

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) was constituted in 1995 and restructured in 2000 following the merger of the erstwhile Department of Industrial

Development. Since then, the Department has emerged as the nodal authority of the Government of India for formulation and promotion of industrial policy at the national level. DPIIT has been instrumental in guiding policy interventions aimed at strengthening India’s industrial base, promoting internal trade, and responding effectively to the evolving needs of a rapidly changing economic environment. It’s role has progressively expanded in line with new challenges and opportunities arising from globalization, technological advancement, and shifts in domestic and international markets.

Maasi Raises ₹6 Crore Pre‑Seed to Build India’s Trusted Childcare Platform with Verified Nannies and Governess Services

The Bengaluru-based consumer-tech company is building a predictable nanny experience for India's parents, with reliable and trained caregivers.

Maasi, a Bengaluru-based childcare company, has raised ₹6 crore in a pre-seed round led by Better Capital alongside Antler India, one of the largest pre-seed rounds in India's childcare category. Angel investors in the round include veteran founders like Rishikesh SR (Rapido), Vaibhav Khandelwal (Shadowfax), Sumit Khandelwal (Xoxoday), Siddhant Goyal (Crane VC) and Sanjay Ramakrishnan (Multiply Ventures).

“Finding reliable childcare is still a gamble for millions of Indian parents. We’re excited to back Aashu, Gargi and Reshov as they bring trust and accountability to it and build a new standard for childcare in India,” said Vaibhav Domkundwar, founder of Better Capital, India’s largest inception-stage venture capital fund.

The round follows a strong start. Maasi's public launch on 20 October drew a waitlist of more than 4,000 parents within five days. The company has served more than 1,200 parents with over 500 caregivers and is growing 20% week on week.

Half of India's working women leave their jobs to care for their children. * For families who keep working, the answer is usually a nanny found through a neighbour or a WhatsApp forward, with no training, no accountability and no backup when she leaves. Maasi wants to make that experience predictable.

Maasi currently offers on-demand nannies starting at ₹199 an hour and monthly subscriptions starting at ₹5,999. Every caregiver is verified and trained before she meets a family in a free programme led by preschool directors, nurses and former airline cabin crew trainers.

Its newest category, the Maasi Governess, has drawn particular attention from parents: an English-speaking nanny trained in screen-free engagement and care.

Maasi grew out of Urban Parents Club, a community of more than 8,000 Bengaluru parents where one question came up more than any other: where do I find a nanny I can trust? The founders, all of whom come from families that run schools, decided to answer it after a close friend quit her job because she could not find reliable childcare. 'Maasi' is the Hindi word for a mother's sister: the one person a mother would hand her child to without a second thought.

“This is a tier-A team solving the hardest problem in childcare. Maasi is exclusive by design, with every caregiver held to an exceptionally high bar, and that’s exactly why we backed them,” said Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner at Antler India.

Maasi will use the funds to scale caregiver recruitment and training, build its technology platform and grow its team in Bengaluru.

About Maasi

Maasi is setting the gold standard for childcare in India. It trains, pays and supports caregivers, giving families in Bengaluru trusted, accountable care at home. Maasi was founded by Aashu Manchali, Gargi Pandey, and Reshov Roy and is operated by Elephant in the Room Infotech Private Limited. mymaasi.com

Amaha Funding: Mental Healthcare Startup Set to Raise ₹100 Crore for Hospital and Clinic Expansion

The round brings together new and existing investors, including Lightbox, Fireside Ventures and prominent family offices and entrepreneurs. The capital will drive further expansion of Amaha’s hospital and clinic network in key cities across India, along with investments in clinical capabilities and technology.

Amaha, an integrated mental healthcare organisation, is set to close ₹100 crore fundraise to expand its hospital and clinic network and strengthen access to specialist care for people living with moderate to severe mental illness and their families. The round includes participation from existing investors such as Lightbox Ventures and Fireside Ventures, alongside London-based life skills platform, Sandbox International Holdings Limited (SIHL), Nithin Kamath (through Rainmatter), and the family offices of Mr. Shreyas Shibulal, Mr. Ashish Bharat Ram and Mr. Adarsh Jalan. The ₹100 crore round also includes ₹10 crore in debt financing from Alteria Capital.

This capital will power the next phase of Amaha’s growth, including new hospitals and clinics in key cities across India. It will also help Amaha strengthen its clinical teams and invest in the technology and structures needed to deliver high-quality specialist mental healthcare to more people across India.

Dr. Amit Malik, Psychiatrist, Founder and CEO of Amaha, said: “Over the years, working with lakhs of individuals and families, we have seen how important it is for people living with mental illness to get the right care at the right time, with their families supported along the way. At Amaha, we have built an integrated model that brings together specialised online consultations, outpatient care and hospital-based treatment, delivered by our in-house team of expert psychiatrists and psychologists, to make mental healthcare more accessible.

Our focus now is on deepening our clinical expertise and further building the infrastructure and systems needed to make evidence-based specialist mental healthcare accessible to more individuals and families across India, while maintaining high quality of treatment.”

Strengthening Clinical Capabilities

As its network grows, Amaha will further invest in strengthening clinical training and supervision, expanding its range of evidence-based treatments and protocols that ensure consistent standards of care.

It will also invest in technology, including AI-enabled tools for triage and clinician support, and data analytics that help clinical teams coordinate treatment, track outcomes and improve care delivery. Together, these capabilities will support clinicians in providing personalised, evidence-based care across Amaha's digital, outpatient and hospital services.

Mental Healthcare: The Case for Timely Intervention

Amaha's Mental Health Report 2026 draws on responses from 13,825 people who responded to questions about their mental health, experiences of distress and pathways to seeking professional support. It found that 53% of respondents had lived with their mental health concerns for more than a year before seeking professional help, and 94.9% reported experiencing two or more concerns at the same time. The findings highlight the need for timely access to specialist mental healthcare, through assessment and continued treatment.

About Amaha

Founded in 2016 by psychiatrist and healthcare entrepreneur Dr. Amit Malik, Amaha is an integrated mental healthcare organisation offering services across digital self-care, outpatient and inpatient treatment, and community support. It provides evidence-based assessment and treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD, addiction, schizophrenia and personality disorders.

Amaha operates nine centres across Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, and Mumbai, with services available in more than 15 languages. It has delivered over 450,000 therapy and psychiatry sessions to more than 100,000 clients, the vast majority of them in India. Its clinical network comprises 270+ mental health professionals, and its peer support communities have 65,000+ members.

In 2022, Amaha partnered with Children First, to strengthen its services for children, adolescents and families. In 2025, it launched a 27-bed super-specialty mental health hospital in Bengaluru, expanding its capabilities in intensive psychiatric care. Amaha’s second 55-bed mental health hospital is due to commence services at the end of December, 2026 in South Bangalore. Amaha also partners with 150+ organisations to deliver workplace and institutional mental health programmes.

Website: www.amahahealth.com

Media Contact:

Akshat Jain

Storytellers101
Akshat@storytellers101.com | +91 99202 10948

As You Asked Secures ₹45 Lakh to Simplify Children’s Nutrition

Founders – Nehal Sharma and Vinayak Dhingra 

Backed by ISB D-Labs and angel investors, the nutrition brand will use the capital to support its market launch, product development and expansion of its daily nutrition, hydration and micronutrient range for children aged 2–12.

As You Asked, a nutrition-focused brand rethinking everyday nutrition through clarity, restraint and usability, has raised ₹45 lakh in a pre-seed funding round from ISB D-Labs & and angel investors The round was entirely equity-funded. The capital will support the brand’s broader market launch and initial product expansion.

As You Asked plans to introduce daily nutrition support powders, hydration powders for active days and micronutrient gummies without added sugars, designed to fit into everyday routines without unnecessary ingredients or complexity. The initial range will focus on children aged 2–12, with age-calibrated formulations developed for consistent, long-term use.

“This didn’t start as a business idea, it started with two very different health journeys that eventually led to the same question: what does ‘normal’ nutrition actually mean over time?” said Nehal Sharma, Founder of As You Asked. “What became clear is that nutrition isn’t failing because people don’t care. We’ve seen extremes of anorexia, bulimia, obesity and then a moment where, despite doing everything ‘right’ as adults, a serious health event still happened. That changes how you think about prevention. It’s failing because the system around it is built on excess, not adequacy.”

The company has shaped its approach through conversations with 100+ parents, more than 200 child taste tests and an early pilot involving 200+ customers, helping the team understand how children’s eating patterns, taste preferences and family routines influence everyday nutrition choices.

“Today, you see high awareness around protein and performance, but very little confidence when it comes to everyday nutrition for children. Parents are still unsure what is safe to use daily, long-term, without unintended effects. That’s the gap we’re addressing. We avoid ingredients that are unnecessary or poorly justified. And we design everything for consistency, not intensity, because in nutrition, what holds up over years matters more than what looks impressive in a moment.”

The funds will be deployed across product development and building consumer trust, with a focus on formulation, manufacturing, distribution and transparent communication with parents. As You Asked plans to expand into other underserved areas of nutrition while maintaining its focus on making everyday nutrition simple, practical and easier to understand.

About As You Asked

As You Asked (AYA) is a nutrition brand focused on making everyday nutrition simpler, more considered and easier for families to incorporate into daily routines. Built on the principle of “Listen First, Then Build,” AYA develops nutrition products by listening to parents, understanding real routines and working with nutrition experts to create measured, purposeful formulations. Its approach is centred on clarity, repeatability and food-first nutrition, with products designed to complement everyday meals rather than replace them.

AYA’s initial range includes daily nutrition, hydration and vitamin products for children, including an age-specific milk mix with measured protein support, a hydration formulation combining sodium, potassium, magnesium and glucose for active days, and micronutrient gummies formulated without added sugar or sugar alcohols. The products are developed for everyday use and manufactured in GMP-certified, FDA-approved facilities, adhering to established quality and safety standards.

Wesbite: https://asyouasked.com/

Circle Raises Rs 25 Crore Led By Nexus Venture Partners, To Build India’s Trusted AI‑Driven Pre‑Owned Marketplace

Circle combines AI-powered verification and logistics to make buying and selling pre-owned goods as easy and trustworthy as buying new.

Circle, a managed customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplace for pre-owned goods, has raised ₹25 crore in seed funding, led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Titan Capital and Raveen Sastry, co-founder of Myntra. Ajith Pai, COO of Delhivery, has also joined the round as an angel.

In just a year since launch, Circle has facilitated about ₹25 crore in pre-owned sales, attracting over 1 million visitors and generating 100,000 listings from Bengaluru alone. On Circle, sellers typically find a buyer within three days, while listings on classifieds can take weeks or even months to sell. Circle is bringing much-needed liquidity and trust to a market that has long lacked both.

India’s pre-owned market isn’t short of buyers or sellers. It’s short of trust.

Millions of Indians already trade through classifieds, neighbourhood groups and informal networks. But unreliable product information, limited verification, logistical hassles and payment risks make transactions difficult. Existing solutions often depend on manual processes that are labour-intensive, difficult to scale and prone to inconsistencies.

Circle combines AI-native technology, human verification and managed fulfilment to run trusted C2C commerce at a lower cost. By reducing manual effort for users, it makes every transaction convenient. And unlike existing resellers, it doesn’t own inventory, so more of the value stays with buyers and sellers.

On Circle, great deals aren’t limited to sale days. Buyers get incredible value simply by choosing pre-owned, from iPhones, PlayStations and cameras to premium office chairs, designer furniture, watches, handbags and sneakers. Every purchase is backed by product verification and the 3-Day Circle Guarantee.

For sellers, Circle makes it easy to turn things they no longer use into money, handling everything from listing to pickup and payout.

“Nearly 40% of our buyers come back within 90 days, and half our sellers list again. That tells us buying and selling pre-owned can become a regular part of people’s lives. India has an incredible amount of value sitting in its homes. We’re building Circle to make it ridiculously easy to unlock that value, and to make pre-owned a natural first choice for millions of Indians,” said Ankit Misra, Co-founder, Circle.

“India’s pre-owned market is large, but selling used goods remains difficult due to costs, trust & scale. Circle has understood this problem deeply and is executing exceptionally well to solve it. We believe they have the potential to fundamentally reshape how India buys and sells pre-owned goods,” said Suvir Sujan, Partner, Nexus Venture Partners.

The new funding will accelerate Circle’s expansion beyond Bengaluru. Circle will invest further in AI-powered pricing, discovery and verification to simplify listing, improve the customer experience and scale efficiently, alongside expanding its Trust Hubs and logistics network.

“Too many Indians have experienced the uncertainty of buying or selling pre-owned goods. At Circle, we’re taking ownership of trust, so buyers and sellers have someone they can count on. That’s why we built dedicated Trust Hubs for verification and fulfilment. Our ambition is to help 100 million Indians buy and sell with confidence on Circle,” said Chirag Kataruka, Co-founder, Circle.

Circle was founded in 2025 by Chirag Kataruka and Ankit Misra, friends for 18 years who have built a startup together before. United by the belief that buying and selling pre-owned in India deserved a complete rethink, they set out to replace uncertainty and hassle with trust and convenience. Both bring experience across consumer marketplaces and technology. Chirag held leadership roles at Mu Sigma and Swvl, where he worked through Swvl’s 2022 Nasdaq listing, while Ankit was a product leader at Jupiter Money and previously founded Chase. At Circle, Ankit drives product, growth and business, while Chirag leads operations, customer experience and strategy.

About Circle

Circle is a Bengaluru-based managed C2C marketplace making pre-owned commerce simple, trustworthy and accessible. Its AI-native platform combines verification, secure payments and logistics so buyers and sellers can transact across categories without Circle owning any inventory.

For more information, visit https://www.justcircleit.com/
Download the app at: https://justcircleit.com/download-app

ThinkMetal Secures ₹27 Crore Led by IAN Alpha Fund to Scale Indigenous Precision Manufacturing

IAN Alpha Fund, the second fund in the IAN Group’s series of venture capital funds, has led a ₹27 crore funding round in ThinkMetal, an advanced materials and manufacturing technology company building indigenous technologies for high-value precision manufacturing. The round also saw participation from 3i Partners and existing investors.

The new capital will support ThinkMetal’s next phase of growth, including product development, expansion of its materials and R&D capabilities, strengthening of the team, and wider adoption of its technology among industrial customers.

Manufacturing high-value precision metal parts, tools and components for demanding industrial applications can involve long lead times, expensive tooling, specialised equipment and dependence on imported technologies. ThinkMetal is building an integrated technology stack to address these challenges by combining advanced materials, manufacturing processes, industrial systems and application development.

Its current commercial beachhead is SistemT1, an industrial metal additive manufacturing system designed to enable faster and more flexible production of precision metal components. SistemT1 is powered by ThinkMetal’s proprietary FuseX™ metal filament technology, which forms part of the company’s growing materials and process IP portfolio.

Founded by Sabyasachi Ghosh and Arushi Sharma, ThinkMetal has progressed from technology development to enterprise application-led pilots and is now focused on taking these solutions into larger commercial deployments. The company is also expanding its materials library and building in-house capabilities for processing and developing newer materials.

ThinkMetal serves industrial manufacturers requiring qualified, high-value precision manufacturing for mission-critical applications across sectors including aerospace, defence, space, automotive and electric mobility. Rather than building around a single machine, the company is developing capabilities across materials, manufacturing technology and application knowledge with the aim of building deeper IP and indigenous technology capabilities that can extend across industrial applications. The company estimates a global opportunity of approximately $110 billion across advanced manufacturing and materials.

Sabyasachi Ghosh, Co-founder & CEO, ThinkMetal, said: “This investment is an important step in ThinkMetal’s journey from technology development towards commercialisation. We’ll use this capital to strengthen our product development, expand our team and materials capabilities and accelerate adoption across industrial applications. Our long-term focus remains on building deep indigenous capabilities in materials and manufacturing technologies from India for global markets.”

Rajnish Kapur, Managing Partner, IAN Alpha Fund, said: “Strong nations are built on core materials and manufacturing technologies they own. ThinkMetal is building toward that for India in metal additive manufacturing, with an integrated stack of indigenous hardware, proprietary materials and manufacturing technology. Its platform enables manufacturers to produce high-value precision metal parts up to 10x faster and at half the cost, with part quality tested at NABL/ASME- accredited labs. With 17+ IPs already filed, Arushi and Sabyasachi have built a genuine deep-tech moat, developing capabilities across materials, processes and applications that can create a deeper technology and IP base, and we believe ThinkMetal can redefine how India makes high-value precision metal parts. We are proud to back them.”

ThinkMetal’s long-term vision is to build a global materials innovation and intelligence company, making advanced materials and mission-critical precision manufacturing faster, more accessible and industrially scalable, while building globally competitive technology capabilities from India.

About ThinkMetal:

ThinkMetal is an advanced materials and manufacturing technology company building indigenous solutions to make high-value precision manufacturing faster, more predictable and scalable. Industrial metal additive manufacturing is its current commercial beachhead, while its long-term focus is on building deeper capabilities in advanced materials, manufacturing technology and manufacturing intelligence for critical industrial applications.

About IAN Alpha Fund:

IAN Alpha Fund, a $100 Mn SEBI-registered Category II AIF VC Fund, is the 2nd fund in IAN Group's series of funds. The Fund explores opportunities in diverse sectors such as healthtech, cleantech, deep tech, agritech, medtech, hardware and electronics, manufacturing, Web 3.0, Metaverse, Industry 4.0, SaaS, and other sectors where innovation is transformational. The Fund invests in innovative startups solving real problems for India and the world, with sustainable business models enabling scale by leveraging technology. With the IAN Alpha Fund, IAN Group continues its two-decade legacy of building a portfolio of technology-focused, innovative companies led by founders who not only understand customer needs but also have the leadership qualities to build large and valuable businesses.

About IAN Group:

IAN Group is India’s largest horizontal platform for early-stage investments, comprising the IAN Angel Fund, BioAngels, and a series of SEBI-registered Venture Capital Funds, the latest being a US$100mn VC Fund, IAN Alpha Fund. IAN enables entrepreneurs to raise from Rs. 50 lakhs to Rs. 50 crores, supported by high-quality mentoring by successful entrepreneurs, enabling access to global markets. IAN Group backs founders across domains and helps them scale their companies across India and beyond. Forbes has recognised IAN as one of the most iconic business and economic developments of Independent India over the last 75 years, alongside institutions such as LIC, NASSCOM, the RBI, and Naukri.com.

Inner Sky Labs Unveils Kavach, Raises ₹300 Cr to Scale Physical AI

Ten years in the making, Inner Sky Labs exits stealth and unveils a full stack of foundation models for physical machines: how they sense the world, how they decide what to do — and Kavach, a safety layer that has the final word before anything moves.

Inner Sky Labs today unveiled a complete stack of foundation models that lets machines sense, decide and act safely around people. Every great leap in human productivity has come from a new kind of machine working alongside people: the loom, the steam engine, the industrial robot. Most of the world's economy, by some estimates as much as 80% of global GDP, is created in the physical world, where language models alone fall short. For a construction project in Delhi, a warehouse in Bhiwandi, a farm in Punjab or a car manufacturer in Stuttgart, physical AI means a smarter machine that follows their lead, intelligently takes the strain out of the job and lets their skill go further. A machine that works this close to people must be one they can trust, because a machine's mistake could hurt someone.

The stack gives a machine three things a human has by instinct: the ability to sense what's happening around it, the ability to decide what to do about it, and — critically — an independent safety check to stop any unsafe move.

Alongside the launch, the startup is closing a ₹300 Cr (about $30.9 Mn) funding round involving existing backers YourNest Venture Capital and Keshav R Murugesh, as well as new global investors.

Teaching machines to see, hear and feel

Before a machine can act safely, it has to understand what's actually happening around it — not just see it, but make sense of it the way a person does. Inner Sky Labs' perception models give a machine that understanding: the Drishti series of vision models reads a scene the way a pair of eyes would, the Shruti series of audio models makes sense of sound — a spoken instruction, the crash of something falling — and the Sparsh models give a machine a working sense of touch, so a robotic hand can tell the difference between gripping an egg and gripping a wrench. Put together, a machine stops being a sensor bolted to a motor and starts being something that actually perceives the room it's in.

Teaching machines to decide, and to think ahead

Understanding a room is only half the job — a machine also has to decide what to do next, and good judgment means thinking a step ahead. Inner Sky Labs' action models — Kriya, Prana and Karma — supply generative action intelligence to plan and carry out physical movement — reaching, gripping, walking, flying — and also to predict what happens next: if this arm moves this way, does the box slip, does the person standing nearby step forward. It's the same kind of anticipation a person uses to catch a glass before it tips, built into the machine's decision-making instead of left to reflex.

Kavach: the part of the brain whose only job is to say no

Sensing and deciding well is still not the same as being safe — a machine can understand a room perfectly and still make the wrong call. That's what Kavach — Sanskrit for "shield" — is for: a system that checks every single action a machine is about to take, and has the power to stop it, no matter what the rest of the machine has decided.

Picture a robotic arm about to swing across a factory floor. Before Kavach lets that motion proceed, it checks: is that space clear of people right now, is the planned speed safe for that area, does this action stay inside the zone it's allowed to work in. If the answer to any of those is no, the arm does not move. Not "slows down." Not "flags it for review afterward." The action is blocked before it starts.

A decade of trust, now scaling up

Inner Sky Labs already knows what it means to be trusted with something fragile. It is the company behind Miko, the companion robot that has spent the past ten years engaging and educating children to improve their social-emotional skills and is now in more than 140 countries. An early version of the same safety thinking that has spent a decade deciding what Miko may say to a child is now the foundation deciding what any machine — an industrial arm, a delivery robot, a drone — is allowed to do. In an independent evaluation by BDO’s cyber security practice, Miko's safety system caught every unsafe prompt across seven public AI-safety benchmarks, ahead of four widely used commercial AI models, and ranked first at flagging unsafe AI responses. Full methodology at www.innerskylabs.ai. A decade spent earning a parent's trust with a robot for their child is now the foundation for earning a factory's, a hospital's, and a government's trust with machines that move.

Why this matters beyond one company

As machines move into hospitals, factories, streets and homes, whoever writes the rules a machine lives by decides what that machine is allowed to do near a citizen — and today, most of those rules are written somewhere else, in a language, a legal system and a set of values that aren't their own. Inner Sky Labs' system lets any end customer or authority write its own rules — its own definition of what is safe, in its own legal language — and have a machine obey them, without depending on another company's judgment call. Built and proven in Mumbai out of more than ten years of research by IIT Bombay alumni, this is a technology that lets any country decide for itself what its own machines are allowed to do.

The full stack already runs today inside factories, classrooms and consumer products in millions of homes.

"Every robot company will eventually have to answer one question: why should anyone trust this machine near a person," said Sneh Vaswani, co-founder and chief executive of Inner Sky Labs. "For ten years, our answer was Miko — a robot trusted enough to be left with a child. Today we're answering that same question for every kind of machine, with technology built, tested and proven out of India."

“I’ve advised Sneh and the team since 2016, when they first shared this multi-decade vision with me—long before ‘Physical AI’ was even a category,” said Keshav R. Murugesh, early investor, advisor to Inner Sky Labs, and former Chairperson of NASSCOM. “Today, Physical AI is being called a $50 trillion opportunity. I am proud to see this built in India for the world. Miko was the proof point. This is the scale-up.”

Availability

The platform is available today to qualified partners by invitation, with cloud, on-premise and on-device deployment, including fully offline, air-gapped environments for operators who cannot depend on an outside network. Each model — perception, action and Kavach's safety layer — is available on its own. The company has raised over $80M to drive frontier research from investors including Chiratae Ventures, IvyCap Ventures, YourNest Venture Capital and 360 ONE.

About Inner Sky Labs

Inner Sky Labs is a Mumbai-headquartered company, with offices in the US and the UK, that created the consumer brand Miko, the children's companion robot sold globally. Founded out of IIT Bombay, Inner Sky Labs has spent over a decade building the technology that lets machines sense, decide and act safely around people, and is now bringing that same thinking to industrial robots, drones and machines everywhere.

More at innerskylabs.ai.

MoneyTruVa Gets Backing from Sunil Singhania (in personal capacity) and Raj Shamani to Build a Structured Financial Information Platform for Indian Investors

Shareholders include Amar K. Ambani, Ajay Thakur, Kirtan Shah, Sonia Shenoy Platform to be unveiled in Mumbai on 22 October for pre-registration

MoneyTruVa, a structured financial information platform for Indian investors, has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round.

MoneyTruVa brings together financial information that is scattered across exchange filings, media and social platforms, and presents it in a structured format with context. It aims to bring together investors and stakeholders across the financial ecosystem, enabling them to discover information, understand it and make better-informed decisions. The platform is designed to bring greater clarity to an information landscape that is often fragmented across multiple sources and formats.

India's investor base has crossed 13 crore unique accounts, supported by progressive regulation, robust market infrastructure, exchanges, intermediaries and listed companies. As participation continues to broaden and deepen across the country, one of the most important enablers for the next phase of growth will be access to structured financial information that empowers investors to make smarter decisions. MoneyTruVa aims to address this need by transforming fragmented financial information into a structured, accessible and decision-oriented experience for investors.

The platform will be unveiled at an invite-only event in Mumbai on 22 October 2026 and will be open for public pre-registration.

MoneyTruVa's shareholder base includes prominent names from India's financial ecosystem, as well as leading business and finance educators and thought leaders, who share the company's vision of democratising financial information and knowledge for investors across India.

Shareholders from India's financial ecosystem include Sunil Singhania (lead investor, investing in his personal capacity), along with Abhijit Bhave – Former CEO, Equirus Wealth; Ajay Thakur – CEO TGIsmE, Former Head of BSE SME; Amar K. Ambani – Executive Director, Yes Securities; Dhiren Shah – MD, Moneybee Securities; Jayesh Parmar – Managing Partner, Mudita Growth Partner; Kirtan Shah – Founder & CEO, Truvanta Wealth; Kunal Bothra – Market Expert, SEBI Registered Research Analyst, Trainer, Mentor; Rakesh Rathod – Evangelist, smallcase / CASE Platforms; Vikram Kotak – Investor, Former CIO Birla Sun Life Insurance; Vinit Jain – Co-founder, Promore AIF and Broking and others.

The shareholder base also includes leading business and finance educators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Raj Shamani – Entrepreneur, Investor, Author and Founder – Figuring Out Media; Anant Ladha – Creator; Avanne Dubash – Former Anchor ET Now; Dr. Sanjay Arora – Brand Consultant, Author, Founder - Shells Advertising; Karunya Puligadda – Co-founder Cogent Media Labs, Former Anchor & Research Analyst ET Now, News Editor Moneycontrol; Kushal Lodha – Entrepreneur, Finance Podcaster; Mubina Kapasi - Co-founder Cogent Media Labs, Former Anchor & Research Analyst - ET Now; Rahul Malodia – Founder Malodia Business Coaching; Sanjay Kathuria – Financial Educator, Entrepreneur; Sonia Shenoy – Independent Business Journalist, Podcaster, former Anchor CNBC and others.

All shareholders named above have invested in their personal capacity; their investment does not represent an endorsement by, or an association with, any organisation with which they are connected.

Jigish Sonagara, Founder and CEO of MoneyTruVa, said, “We are deeply grateful for the trust and support of some of the most respected names across India's financial and business ecosystem.

Our vision is to democratise access to financial information and knowledge and make it more useful and accessible to every investor, irrespective of their investment journey, location, size of investment or level of knowledge of financial markets. We believe better access to relevant information can play an important role in deepening participation in India's financial markets and contributing to greater financial inclusion. This is just the beginning, and we are excited about the journey ahead.”

About MoneyTruVa

MoneyTruVa is building India's first Structured Financial Information Platform for Smarter Decisions, designed to bring financial information together in a structured and accessible format to help investors discover, understand and make better-informed decisions.

Founded by Jigish Sonagara, who has led technology initiatives for financial market institutions including MCX, IEX and MSE, and has been involved in the conceptualisation of technology platforms spanning exchange systems, risk management, surveillance, market infrastructure and MSME finance. The company also has Sameer Vasani on its Board. Sameer is a TOGAF-certified enterprise architect with extensive expertise in enterprise technology architecture, trading systems and large-scale digital infrastructure.

MoneyTruVa's vision is to democratise access to financial information and knowledge and make it more structured, accessible and useful for investors across India. 

byteXL Raises $9 Mn in Latest Funding Round Led by Elevar Equity and participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital and The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

• byteXL's proven model for scaling tech and AI skilling across India's Tier-2 and Tier-3 engineering colleges is helping more students translate their education into employment.
• This continued backing stands out at a time when overall edtech funding has slowed, underscoring the strength, traction and impact of byteXL's model.
• Last year, 7,600 byteXL graduates were placed in IT and engineering roles; byteXL now plans to expand its reach from 200,000 to 500,000 students across 15 states over the next two years

byteXL has raised USD 9 million in its latest funding round, led by Elevar Equity, with participation from Kalaari Capital and The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The investment builds on the existing investors’ earlier funding of the company in July 2024, supporting byteXL’s continued work to strengthen pathways from engineering education to employment and reaffirming their conviction in its vision and demonstrated ability to scale industry-aligned tech and AI skilling across India.

Founded by brothers Karun and Sricharan Tadepalli, byteXL works with engineering colleges to bring industry-relevant technology and AI learning into the college experience, giving more students opportunities to build practical skills alongside their degrees and translate their education into strong careers.

The new round of investment marks a significant milestone for the company as it scales its unique hybrid model that helps students build industry-relevant skills alongside their engineering education, priming them to be job-ready from day one. Its B2B learning model works directly with engineering colleges, particularly across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, to integrate IT and AI-driven skilling along with regular academic curriculum. Rather than treating skilling as an add-on, byteXL embeds industry-aligned curriculum, hands-on learning, technology platforms and trained educators into the student’s learning journey. This approach is creating stronger pathways from education to employment: last year alone, 7,600 byteXL graduates were placed in IT and engineering roles.

Mr. Sandeep Farias, Founder & Managing Partner, Elevar Equity, said: “At Elevar, our investment approach is centered on backing scalable models that accelerate the economic momentum of Entrepreneurial Households (EHs). Quality education and employability are among the highest-priority investments for EHs, particularly across Tier-2 and Tier-3 communities. What stands out to us is byteXL’s institutional integration and clear potential to build a highly scalable, differentiated platform that empowers the next generation of tech talent across non-metro India.”

Mr Gaurav Jain, Head of University Success, India, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said: “For many young people from underserved communities, an engineering degree represents more than a qualification; it represents the possibility of a better economic future through a well-paying job and strong career. That is why byteXL’s work with engineering colleges across India's tier 2 & 3 cities matters to us. These institutions are home to many first-generation college students who see higher education as a pathway to greater opportunity for themselves and their families. byteXL complements that by bringing industry-aligned, hands-on technology and AI learning directly into the college experience, helping students get hired and keep moving forward in their careers. Our continued investment will expand access to more students and help them turn their education into meaningful employment, career progression and greater economic mobility.”

Speaking on the new round of investment in byteXL, Sampath P, Partner, Kalaari Capital, said: “Our second round of investment in byteXL, reflects the conviction we have developed in both the team and the opportunity they are tapping. byteXL’s differentiation lies in its unique model and proprietary technology platform, enabling it to work within the existing college system and make industry-relevant technology education a part of the student’s four-year journey, rather than an additional layer of training. byteXL is able to address a large and underserved requirement by working within the existing engineering education ecosystem and not re-invent the wheel. Our confidence in byteXL also comes from rapid growth in business over the last few years and its ability to achieve profitability.”

Speaking on the development, Karun Tadepalli, Co-Founder & CEO, byteXL, said: “This fundraise is a strong validation of the growth we have built at byteXL and the confidence our investors have placed in our business and the long-term opportunity. Over the last few years, we have grown from establishing our model with engineering institutions to building a scalable business in the skilling space. The continued backing from our existing investors reflects their confidence in our execution and the strength of the opportunity ahead. As we enter our next phase of growth, our focus will be on expanding our institutional footprint, deepening our technology and AI capabilities, and building byteXL into a larger and more impactful player in India’s technology education ecosystem.”

The company will use the new capital to expand its institutional footprint across India, strengthen its AI and technology-led learning platform, expand its academic and delivery capabilities, and develop new industry-aligned skilling programmes. byteXL plans to grow its presence from 40 institutions to 120 institutions over the next 2 years, while expanding its reach from 2 lakh students to 5 lakh students across 15 states of India.

A significant focus of the investment will be on market expansion, product and technology development, including AI-enabled learning and assessment, student analytics, personalised learning tools and other digital capabilities designed to improve learning outcomes at scale. byteXL will also deepen its academic and institutional partnership teams, enabling it to work with a larger network of colleges and reach more students while maintaining the quality of implementation and learner experience.

byteXL’s latest fundraise, for which LoEstro Advisors acted as the financial advisors, follows its $5.9 million Series A round in July 2024, also led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from the Dell Foundation. The capital was used to expand the team, accelerate product development, introduce new digital tools and technologies, and expand its outreach to colleges and universities across India. The latest round represents a larger bet on the scalability of byteXL’s institutional model and its ability to build a sustainable technology-skilling business that helps more students across India translate their engineering education into meaningful employment.

About byteXL:

byteXL is an edtech company transforming engineering education in India by revolutionizing the education system and creating a pathway of opportunity for students. They are achieving this by partnering with institutions and industry to integrate curriculum, content, and practical learning, thus providing students with the necessary skills and awareness on employability and empowering them to excel in their careers. Through its innovative approach, byteXL aspires to empower students, bridging the gap between academia and industry, and shaping the next generation of highly skilled professionals who will contribute to the development of the nation. It envisions a future where every engineering student has access to a holistic and industry-relevant education that enhances their skills and employability.

To learn more, visit: bytexl.ai.

IAN Angel Fund Backs IndigoTex With ₹5 Crore To Scale India’s Waterless Wool Denim Innovation

IAN Angel Fund leads ₹5 crore in IIT Delhi-originated deep-tech textile startup IndigoTex

IAN Angel Fund, the evergreen fund of IAN Group, has led a ₹5 crore funding round in IndigoTex, India's first waterless wool finishing technology startup commercialising wool and wool blended denim and other fabrics, with participation from SIDBI, FITT, and IIT Delhi Angels. The latest funding will be deployed towards manufacturing and factory setup, expansion of the sales and operations team, commercialisation of IndiWool™ Denim and washable wool/poly-wool fabrics, further R&D and product development, certifications required for domestic & international markets as well as build for scale.

IndiWool™ Denim combines the durability and versatility associated with denim with the thermal and comfort properties of wool. The company has developed variants ranging from low-wool-content fabrics designed for all-weather applications to wool-rich variants aimed at colder climates. They have signed NDAs with Ralpha Lauren and Kering Group, France and are in active discussions with premium and luxury brands, garment manufacturers, fabric exporters and sourcing houses.

Beyond wool denim, IndigoTex is developing ECOTEX™ Wool, a technology that enables washable wool and poly/wool fabrics, addressing the conventional dependence on dry cleaning for wool garments, finishing setup at its manufacturing facility in Rai Industrial Area, Sonipat, Haryana. The facility will help scale-up of its waterless wool finishing technology and commercial production of washable wool and poly/wool fabrics. While its R&D operations will continue to be based at the Research and Innovation Park at IIT Delhi.

Founded in 2024 by Satendra Singh, Prof. B.S. Butola, and Dilip Singh (Co-founders), IndigoTex is building a deep-tech foundation for textile manufacturing in India, with a focus on export-oriented, high-value textile products and technologies. Its portfolio spans innovative wool and technical textiles, as well as sustainable manufacturing solutions designed to address real-world challenges across comfort, performance and textile processing.

IndigoTex was one of the 120 startups selected for Bharat Innovates 2026, in Nice, France, as also at the BRICS Summit 2026.

The company is already beginning to build an international market presence, with engagements across Europe and other cold-climate markets including Australia. The company has initiated discussions and collaborations across France, Russia and Denmark, and plans to deepen its presence across Europe, North America, Australia and other cold-climate markets.

Satendra Singh, Co-founder & CEO, IndigoTex, said, “We would like to sincerely thank each and every investor who participated in this investment round and placed their trust in Indigotex. This investment marks an important milestone in our journey as we build a deep-tech textile company from India for global markets. As we move forward, integrity, sustainable growth, a customer-centric approach, and the responsible deployment of capital will remain at the core of our decisions. We are committed to using this support to strengthen our R&D, scale our innovative textile technologies, expand into technical textiles, and create products that solve real-world problems.”

The company’s broader vision is to establish India as a source of deep-tech textile innovation for global markets, with a focus on advanced and technical textiles. It aims to build a globally recognised textile R&D company that develops new materials, products and problem-solving technologies while creating opportunities for textile engineers to work on technology-led solutions to real-world challenges.

About IndigoTex

Indigotex Private Limited is an IIT Delhi-originated deep-tech textile company developing and commercialising innovative, high-performance and sustainable fabrics and waterless textile processing technologies. The company focuses on creating next-generation textile solutions across wool, technical textiles and sustainable manufacturing.

About IAN Angel Fund

IAN Angel Fund, the evergreen fund of IAN Group, is a SEBI-registered Category I AIF and part of India's leading early-stage investment platform, which pioneered angel investing in the country. Today, IAN invests through its Angel Fund and venture capital funds, backed by a network of approximately 500 investors, including iconic entrepreneurs and industry leaders from India and overseas. The platform enables founders to raise capital from ₹50 lakh to ₹50 crore as they scale, while offering investors a diversified early-stage portfolio across both emerging and growth-stage startups.

About IAN Group

IAN Group is India's largest horizontal platform for early-stage investments, comprising the IAN Angel Fund, BioAngels, and a series of SEBI-registered venture capital funds, including the US$100 million IAN Alpha Fund. IAN supports entrepreneurs with capital, mentoring by experienced founders, and access to global markets. Forbes has recognised IAN as one of the most iconic business and economic developments of Independent India over the last 75 years, alongside institutions such as LIC, NASSCOM, the RBI, and Naukri.com.

Lorazzo Raises ₹15 Crore to Disrupt India’s Kitchen & Bathroom Market with Design‑Led Smart Fittings

Revenues grow 6X in the last year through an omnichannel model

Lorazzo, a design-led, technology-forward kitchen and bathroom brand, today announced that it has raised ₹15 crore in its latest funding round. The round was led by Sauce with follow-on investment from Sprout Venture Partners and participation from Panthera Peak and Alteria Capital.

The company will use the funds to expand its product portfolio, invest in product development, build its team, and strengthen its offline and online channels and enhance its local presence across more states in India.

Karan Kathpalia, Vice President, Sauce, said, “Home improvement presents a significant opportunity to build consumer brands through online discovery and purchasing. The traction Jatin and Saurabh have built online in kitchen and bathroom fittings with Lorazzo is particularly encouraging, given that purchases in this category have traditionally been driven by offline channels. Given the size of the category and the ongoing shift towards organised, branded players, we see substantial room for Lorazzo to grow as it builds on this demand and expands its offline presence.”

Founded in 2024 by Jatin Luthra and Saurabh Gupta, Lorazzo is building a brand that treats kitchen and bathroom fittings as a choice driven by design, features and value. Its range includes an Intelli Smart Commode – a cleansing WC with a heated seat, electronically-operated bidets, air dryer, ambient lighting and digital temperature control. Lorazzo’s Intelli Smart Commode is priced at ₹58,999; a fraction of the ₹1.5 lakh to ₹5 lakh price that comparable cleansing toilets from international brands command.

“Kitchen and bathroom fittings have remained one of the few large consumer categories where brands have largely stayed unchanged while the consumer has evolved dramatically. People today care deeply about design, technology and the experience their home delivers, but the category is still largely driven by legacy brands and traditional purchase behaviour. We believe it is time to change that,” said Jatin Luthra, Co-founder, Lorazzo.

Lorazzo offers class-leading, up to 20-years warranty on its range of products, including kitchen sinks, sanitaryware, mirrors and cabinets, and faucets. It also offers pan-India on-site installation and service. The brand has grown its revenues six times over the last 12 months and is now targeting ₹100 Crore in revenue over the next two years.

“Our ambition is not simply to build another fittings company. We want to build a consumer brand for one of the most frequently used parts of every home. Design and technology get consumers to choose us, but warranty, service and product reliability are what earn their trust,” said Saurabh Gupta, Co-founder, Lorazzo.

Taking on a Category Built on Decades of Legacy

India’s kitchen and bathroom fittings market remains one of the country’s most traditional consumer categories. For decades, consumers have largely chosen from a handful of legacy brands, with purchase decisions often influenced by plumbers, contractors and channel partners rather than the end consumer.

Lorazzo believes the category is ready for a truly disruptor brand. The company is bringing together contemporary design, technology and functional innovation to improve consumer experience across a category that has historically been driven more by basic functionality and distribution muscle.

From faucets, sinks and statement wash basins to smart toilets, bidets and shower systems, Lorazzo is building a portfolio designed around how modern consumers want their homes to look, function and feel.

About Lorazzo

Lorazzo is a new-age Indian kitchen and bathroom brand focused on bringing together design, technology and functionality across everyday home products. Founded in 2024, the company offers products across faucets, sinks, shower systems, bidets, wash basins, smart toilets and other kitchen and bathroom products. Lorazzo is building an omnichannel business across e-commerce, quick commerce and offline retail, with a focus on making traditionally functional home categories, more consumer-centric and design-forward.

Unveilr AI Raises Pre-Seed at ₹16.7 Crore Valuation from Aviral Bhatnagar’s AJVC to Turn AI Search into Leads

• Mumbai-based founder Sanditya Srivastava's Unveilr AI has raised pre-seed funding at ₹16.7 crore valuation from Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC.
• Unveilr AI helps B2B and consumer brands generate qualified leads from Google and AI search engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude.
• The company will use the funds to build engineering capacity and expand its sales team as it grows across India, the UAE and the US.
• Unveilr AI was named Company of the Year in AI Search by siliconindia, featured in Inc42's '30 Startups To Watch', and featured in The Ken's coverage of the AI-search ecosystem.

Unveilr AI, a Mumbai-based AI search and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) company founded by Sanditya Srivastava, has raised pre-seed funding at ₹16.7 crore valuation from Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC. The company helps brands generate qualified leads from traditional search engines and AI search platforms.

Buyers increasingly turn to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews for recommendations before contacting a business. Unlike a traditional results page, an AI-generated answer typically names only two or three brands, which means a business that is not included can lose a potential customer before that customer reaches its website.

The investment reflects this shift. As AI engines take on a larger role in deciding which businesses buyers consider, visibility in AI-generated answers is becoming a direct source of leads, and one that most businesses are not yet equipped to measure or improve. Unveilr AI addresses this by combining proprietary technology with specialist execution, and by tracking its work through to the leads its customers receive.

"AI has become the new way to search. Unveilr's proprietary methods are starting to show immediate traction and visibility. Unveilr's strong adoption in our large AJVC portfolio is a sign of its general-purpose utility," said Aviral Bhatnagar, Founder, AJVC.

Unveilr AI combines search engine optimization (SEO) and AEO into a single search strategy. Its proprietary AI agents monitor how a brand appears across AI engines, identify the buyer questions where competitors are recommended instead, and map the sources those engines rely on. The company's SEO and AEO specialists then build the content, technical improvements and authority needed for the brand to be included in those answers.

Unveilr AI works with both B2B and consumer brands, and customers typically begin to see results within the first month. For one Indian B2B legal-services platform, the company increased AI-sourced traffic by roughly 4.7x and leads by 5x, alongside an approximately 80% increase in ChatGPT citations. For one D2C brand, organic search now accounts for about 27% of total revenue, with most of the remainder coming from performance marketing.

"A buyer today asks ChatGPT which lawyer, clinic or software to choose and gets two or three names back. If a brand isn't one of them, it has lost that lead before its website ever loads," said Sanditya Srivastava, Founder and CEO, Unveilr AI. "Referrals and paid campaigns bring in customers, but they don't compound. Organic visibility does: every piece of content and every citation keeps generating leads long after it goes live. That's why we measure our work by the leads our customers receive, not just by rankings."

"In a few years, search will shift almost entirely to AI," Srivastava added. "People won't scroll through results. They'll ask an AI, and increasingly AI agents will research, compare and buy on their behalf. When an agent is making the purchase, a brand is either one of the options it trusts or it isn't considered at all. That's the shift we're building Unveilr AI for."

With the new capital, Unveilr AI plans to build additional engineering capacity to expand what its AI agents can do, and to grow its sales team to reach more businesses across India, the UAE and the United States.

About Unveilr AI

Unveilr AI (Unveilr AI Pvt. Ltd.) is a Mumbai-based AI search and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) company that helps brands generate qualified leads through Google and AI search engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. Founded by Sanditya Srivastava and launched in February 2026, the company has a team of IIT alumni and SEO/AEO specialists, and serves B2B and consumer brands across India, the UAE and the United States. It is backed by Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC.

For more information, visit unveilrai.com.

Subvocal’s WearableTech Raises $1.3M from Y Combinator & Others to Transform Silent Speech Into Seamless Computer Interaction

Aarush Yadav (L) and Arnav Kumar (R)

Aarush Yadav, an Indian founder and computer science student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is building a wearable device that lets people interact with computers without speaking aloud. Yadav is the cofounder and CEO of The Subvocal Company, which has secured approximately $1.3 million in pre-seed backing from Afore Capital, Y Combinator and angel investors.

The company is developing a discreet wearable that decodes silently mouthed speech into text and computer commands, with minimal visible movement and no audible voice. It aims to make interacting with computers and AI agents practical in settings where speaking aloud would be disruptive or inconvenient.

Yadav works on the sensing hardware and embedded firmware that acquire the physical signals used by the company’s speech-decoding software. His responsibilities include sensor-data acquisition and integrating the sensing hardware with the software pipeline. This work connects the physical signals associated with silently mouthed speech to the system that interprets them as text and commands. Alongside his technical responsibilities, Yadav leads fundraising strategy, team building and go-to-market planning.

“Computers have become far more powerful, but the way we talk to them has changed very little. We believe the best way to interact with computers and AI agents will be silent, seamless and far faster than what exists today,” said Aarush Yadav, cofounder and CEO of The Subvocal Company. “This funding gives us the resources to build the future of human-computer interaction.”, said, Aarush Yadav, Co-Founder & CEO, The Subvocal Company.

Yadav and his cofounder, Arnav Kumar, were Georgia Tech computer science students when they attended Stanford University’s TreeHacks in February 2026. Working in a four-person team, they built an early prototype using muscle-sensing electrodes, machine learning and language-model assistance to translate facial muscle signals into text and computer commands. Although they did not win, the experience convinced them of the technology’s consumer potential. They subsequently raised funding and moved to San Francisco to develop the product full-time.

Afore Capital provided the company’s initial $500,000 investment in April 2026, while the product was at the early prototype stage. Afore’s subsequent investment, angel funding and Y Combinator’s $500,000 investment commitment bring total pre-seed backing to approximately $1.3 million.

The Subvocal Company is part of Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 batch. The accelerator reports a typical acceptance rate of about 1%. The company also won YC’s Group 1 Product Showcase, with voting from YC alumni and batchmates. YC subsequently reposted Kumar’s announcement of the win.

According to the company, its prototypes have reached text-entry speeds above 200 words per minute, with no audible speech and minimal visible mouth movement. The team is now developing the technology into a consumer product, expanding its team and aiming to open pre-orders in the coming months, when it plans to unveil the technology and product.

IIT Delhi-Duo Founded ByteAsk Raises $1M in YC-led Funding to Reinvent AI Coding for C++

[L-R] – Pratyush Saini, Co-founder and CTO, ByteAsk, Anirudha Kulkarni, co-founder and CEO ByteASK 

ByteAsk raises $1 million in YC-led pre-seed round to build AI coding agents for C and C++

ByteAsk, founded by former LawSutra AI co-founders Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, is building AI coding agents for C and C++ developers working in high-stakes industries.

Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, two IIT Delhi computer science graduates who previously built and sold legal AI startup LawSutra AI to Manupatra, one of India’s pioneers in online legal research, have started their second company, ByteAsk. The company has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator and Entrepreneur First, alongside investments from angels working at leading global quantitative trading firms.

Founded in June 2026 and headquartered in San Francisco, with operations spanning the US and India, ByteAsk is building AI coding agents for C and C++, focused on developers working in mission-critical environments across defence, aerospace, robotics, high-frequency trading, finance, embedded systems, automotive and semiconductors. The company has also been selected for Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch and is one of five India-founded young companies in the cohort. It is the only India-founded company in the batch focused on the “neolab” model of building deeply technical companies around emerging AI capabilities.

The founders, Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, first met as undergraduate students at IIT Delhi and worked together on multiple academic projects before starting LawSutra AI in January 2026. The legal-tech startup set out to make legal research faster and more reliable with AI, addressing the limitations of traditional keyword-based tools and the difficulty of relying on generic AI chatbots for high-stakes legal work due to hallucinations and unreliable citations. Anirudha’s family background in law gave the founders an early understanding of these challenges and how they affected lawyers in their day-to-day work.

LawSutra addressed the gap through semantic legal search, enabling the system to understand the context and meaning behind a legal query rather than relying solely on exact keyword matches. By building closely with lawyers and incorporating their feedback into the product, the startup quickly attracted interest from 5,000+ lawyers and saw its user base grow week-on-week, making it one of the fastest-growing legal-tech startups in its segment. This early combination of user adoption, product validation and growing market traction led to the startup being acquired by Manupatra, one of India’s pioneers in online legal research and a leading legal technology ecosystem, within four months of its founding.

Manupatra tested LawSutra's search technology on its own legal data. 97.5% of the results were found to be relevant to the queries, the highest among the AI solutions tested. Its technology now runs inside Manupatra AI Search, which serves lawyers, judges, law firms, government institutions and other legal professionals across India.

Both founders bring deep experience across AI, C++, systems engineering and high-performance computing, with their professional careers spanning quantitative trading, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and developer systems.

Kulkarni holds a B.Tech and an M.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi. Before ByteAsk, he worked on low-latency C++ systems at Optiver and core data and markets engineering at Quantbox Research, where he built a Python-to-C++ optimising transpiler that reduced execution time from 1.5 seconds to 150 nanoseconds in production environments. He was also part of Optiver’s Delta One trading team and has a background in competitive programming and quantitative research.

Saini holds a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi. Before ByteAsk, he was a Senior AI Engineer at ThirdAI, where he worked on large-scale neural network training and inference infrastructure, and a founding engineer at SimbianAI, where he helped build AI security agents handling more than a million security incidents annually. At LawSutra AI, he designed the search engine and lawyer-grade evaluation system that formed the core of the company’s legal AI technology.

Deepak Kapoor, Founder and CEO, Manupatra, said, “LawSutra’s semantic capability stood out for combining strong technology with a clear understanding of how lawyers actually research. Its performance on Manupatra’s proprietary data, together with the team’s technical depth and responsiveness, led us to explore the acquisition. By integrating this capability with Manupatra’s proprietary legal database and research platform, we can now bring more intuitive, intent-driven legal search to the wider legal community through Manupatra AI Search.”

From legal AI to the software behind critical systems

ByteAsk was born out of a personal pain point the founders had experienced firsthand. They saw an important gap in how AI was being applied to C and C++, particularly for developers working in environments where reliability, performance and correctness are critical. While AI coding tools had dramatically changed software development, they found that the same gains had not translated equally well to C and C++.

The founders identified a significant gap in model performance on C and C++. Rather than building another generic AI coding assistant, they decided to focus on the grounding, verification and reasoning infrastructure required to make AI useful for complex systems programming. Before building the product, the team gathered publicly available evaluations of AI on C and C++, built its own tests around real bugs engineers had encountered, and evaluated leading AI models to understand where they failed.

“Seeing AI transform software development while C and C++ developers still struggle with the limitations of generic coding agents made us realise there was a significant gap to address. From the very beginning, we wanted to work on a problem that was technically difficult and had a large global upside. C++ sits underneath many of the systems the world depends on, but AI has not yet solved the engineering challenges developers face there. Building LawSutra taught us that models are only as useful as the context, verification and workflows around them. At ByteAsk, we are applying that same philosophy to code”, said Anirudha Kulkarni, Co-Founder and CEO, ByteAsk.

According to industry estimates, C++ represents an approximately $400 billion industry in annual salary spend, while they see agentic coding as a roughly $10 billion opportunity growing rapidly year-on-year. Rather than attempting to serve every software developer immediately, ByteAsk is starting with organisations where the combination of C++, AI and reliability creates the most acute need.

“C and C++ power a huge amount of the world's critical infrastructure, but the gains we've seen from AI coding tools have not translated equally well to these environments,” said Pratyush Saini, Co-Founder and CTO, ByteAsk. “We wanted to work on a problem where reliability, verification and context matter as much as generation.”

Commenting on the investment, Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner Y Combinator, said, “When applying to Y Combinator for ByteAsk, what stood out about Anirudha and Pratyush was their passion, authenticity, and technical expertise. They saw a large group of software developers that were left out of current AI coding tools and had figured out how to make them more productive.”

Building AI coding agents for high-stakes engineering

The fresh capital raised will support ByteAsk’s next phase of product and infrastructure development, with the company planning to expand its engineering and research teams across San Francisco and Bengaluru, invest in GPU compute and training data, and build enterprise-grade security, privacy and on-premises infrastructure for customers in sensitive industries.

The company plans to initially focus on large firms in high-frequency trading, automotive and embedded systems, before expanding into adjacent markets. The founders say that engineers are using ByteAsk approximately six times more intensively each day than a comparable open-source coding agent, while its weekly active users are doubling week-on-week. On its internal benchmark of real firmware engineering tickets, ByteAsk says its grounding environment enables a smaller model to resolve 89% of tickets, compared with 61% for the best frontier model tested without the environment.

ByteAsk is also developing its own post-training approach for C++, with the aim of releasing one of the first language models specifically post-trained for the language within the next six to eight months.

About ByteAsk

ByteAsk is building AI coding agents for C and C++. Founded in 2026 by IIT Delhi alumni Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, ByteAsk focuses on helping engineers solve complex software problems in mission-critical environments where accuracy, reliability, security and performance are essential. The company is backed by Y Combinator and Entrepreneur First, with additional support from angel investors from the quantitative trading industry.