Ignosis Raises $4M Led by Peak XV’s Surge to Scale AI-Powered Financial Intelligence for India’s BFSI Sector

L-R: Nirav Prajapati, Co-Founder & CEO, Ignosis, and Chintan Sheth, Co-Founder & CTO, Ignosis

• In just three years, Ignosis has earned the trust of 125+ financial institutions enabling access to credit, insurance, and investments through hyper-personalised, AI-driven financial intelligence.

Ignosis, India’s leading enterprise-first Account Aggregator (AA) infrastructure and financial data intelligence platform, has raised $4 million in its Pre-Series A round led by Peak XV’s Surge, with participation from Force Ventures, Razorpay Ventures, Kunal Shah of Cred and other existing investors.

Ignosis tackles the systemic challenges holding back India’s financial data ecosystem. Despite rapid digitisation, 160M+ Indian consumers remain credit underserved. Most of them without a formal proof of income, remain excluded from affordable loans, insurance, and financial planning. Even 80% of MSMEs still struggle to access formal credit.

Ignosis addresses these critical gaps with its Account Aggregator (AA) infrastructure and financial data intelligence platform. It enables BFSI to underwrite, collect, and advise with confidence. And drive the next wave of financial inclusion in India.

Nirav Prajapati, Co-Founder and CEO, Ignosis, says–

We believe Account Aggregator (AA) is set to become embedded in every financial transaction journey in India. Just as UPI became the default rails for payments, AA is poised to become the default rails for secure, consent-driven financial data sharing. Our solution is to build a reliable and intelligent Account Aggregator (AA) layer that makes financial data both accessible and usable.

“With advances in AI, we are enabling BFSI to move away from legacy bank statement analytics into a new era of financial data intelligence,” says Chintan Sheth, Co-founder & CTO, Ignosis. “Our platform delivers highly accurate income detection, risk underwriting, and fraud and financial health signals. Ignosis gives institutions the precision and confidence to serve customers with speed, trust, and personalized financial services.”

Ignosis will deploy the capital to scale its engineering, business, and compliance teams in support of customers across India’s evolving financial ecosystem. Key growth priorities include driving hyper-personalisation through financial data intelligence and building finance-specific LLMs and agentic AI use cases for BFSI.

Ignosis is built on secure, compliant rails aligned with the RBI’s Account Aggregator framework and the DPDP Act, 2023, enabling financial institutions to innovate while meeting regulatory standards. Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Ignosis was founded in 2022.

About Ignosis

Ignosis is India’s financial data intelligence platform with enterprise-first Account Aggregator infrastructure for financial institutions. Serving 125+ BFSI customers, its AI analytics platform provides accurate income verification, intelligent collections, spend analysis, portfolio/wealth insights, hyper-personalised nudges along with risk and fraud signals.

Ignosis is building on RBI- and DPDP-compliant DPI rails including AA, OCEN, and ONDC-FS to empower 300M+ underserved Indians with faster, safer, and more inclusive access to credit, wealth, and insurance.

Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Ignosis was founded by Nirav Prajapati and Chintan Sheth and has raised $4M in pre-Series A led by Peak XV’s Surge with participation from Razorpay Ventures, Force Ventures, and Kunal Shah.

Ex-Sequoia-India Investor Raises $3M for AÏZA by Amaani from Peak XV’s Surge to Build Beauty Brands from the Middle East

Amaani, a new-age consumer company reimagining beauty and wellness from the Middle East, has raised $3M in seed funding for its debut Arab beauty brand AÏZA. The round was led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA), marking their first consumer and seed investment in the MENA region.

Founded by Shubham Poddar, a former Sequoia India investor who helped drive its expansion in the Middle East with investments across fintech, foodtech, and proptech, Amaani is built on a bold vision to create global beauty brands from Arabia.

“For decades, the Middle East has fueled the success of global brands. But the world is now looking toward the Middle East – not just for inspiration, but for innovation. Amaani is our way of answering that call,” said Shubham Poddar, Founder & CEO of Amaani. "Amaani means ‘wishes and aspirations’ in Arabic, and that’s exactly what we’re building: brands that capture the spirit of a rising region and speak to the world. With the region boasting among the highest per capita beauty spend globally, growing online penetration, and an increasing demand for local relevance, Amaani is poised to meet a generational shift in how consumers shop and what they seek: brands that reflect their identity, values, and aspirations.”

Launched online in May 2025, AÏZA blends Arab heritage with global innovation, using regional ingredients like dates, black seed, and bakhoor, combined with clinical actives, and crafted in leading labs in Korea, Japan, and Italy. Its hero products include Sukkar Rush, a high-shine lip treatment with date and honey; Scent Storm, a bakhoor & rose hair mist inspired by Arab fragrance rituals; and Date Setter, a brow & lash serum with date seed and castor oil. In just three months of marketing launch, AÏZA has surpassed $2M in annualized revenue, fueled by strong consumer traction in UAE & Saudi Arabia.

“The GCC beauty and personal care market is already a $12B industry, growing at over 12% annually, with some of the highest per capita spends globally,” said GV Ravishankar, Managing Director at Peak XV. “We believe the region is now primed to produce the next wave of culturally resonant, globally admired consumer brands. Amaani is well positioned to lead this movement.”

AÏZA’s formulations are vegan, cruelty-free, alcohol-free, and meet “Clean at Sephora” standards, while championing Arab culture and storytelling for a global audience. Led by a strong team from leading consumer companies such as Huda Beauty, Lenskart, Giving Movement, and Careem, the brand has already hosted a pop-up in Dubai Mall and been featured in publications like Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Hia and Laha.

Amaani plans to scale AÏZA across the region and globally, both online and through retail, while also developing a portfolio of future brands that continue to celebrate and reimagine Modern Arabia for the world.

About Amaani

Founded by Shubham Poddar, Amaani is a Dubai-based company on a mission to build new-age consumer brands from the Middle East, backed by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA). It’s debut brand AÏZA is a premium skincare and haircare brand inspired by the rich heritage, ingredients, and rituals of Arabia – reimagined for the modern world. Each product is crafted with powerful regional superfoods, blended with proven clinical actives and produced in leading global labs. With values rooted in being Past Forward, Proud, Real, and Positive, AÏZA brings the spirit of modern Arab beauty to the global stage.

Qbeast Secures $7.6 Mn in Seed Funding to Help Open Data Platforms Scale Efficiently

• Barcelona Supercomputing Center spinout lands funding from Peak XV to accelerate the development of the first open, multi-dimensional indexing layer for Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi.

As enterprise data volumes explode and AI pipelines strain modern infrastructure, the open Lakehouse architecture has emerged as the new standard for analytics at scale. But while formats like Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, and Apache Hudi are powerful, they come with a hidden tax: up to 90% of compute resources are wasted scanning irrelevant data, according to Databricks. Today Qbeast, the next-generation data optimization platform, announces a $7.6 million seed round to fix that.

The seed round was led by Peak XV's Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India), with participation from HWK Tech Investment and Elaia Partners. The new capital will fund team expansion, broaden product support across more analytics use cases, and double down on the company's mission to make open data platforms faster, simpler, and more cost-efficient.The company will also establish a development centre in Bangalore as part of its commitment to scaling innovation, and are actively hiring talent in India to drive these efforts forward.

Born out of research at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Qbeast's platform plugs directly into existing Delta, Iceberg, and Hudi tables and accelerates workloads by prioritizing just the data you need. Its multi-dimensional indexing can handle complex filters across columns like time, region, or customer segment – optimizing for both real-time and historical queries in a single table. Unlike traditional partitioning or sort orders that work in single dimensions, Qbeast enables simultaneous filtering across any combination of data attributes. And it integrates with popular compute engines like Spark, Databricks, Snowflake, DuckDB, and Polars without requiring teams to rewrite pipelines or adopt a new storage layer.

To lead the next chapter of the company’s growth, Srikanth Satya, a cloud infrastructure veteran with decades of experience at AWS and Microsoft Azure, has been appointed as Qbeast's CEO. His deep technical expertise in cloud-native architecture and strategic leadership will steer Qbeast through its next phase of global expansion.

"Data teams shouldn't have to choose between speed, cost, and openness," said Satya. "We built Qbeast to make high-performance analytics simple and accessible, without locking organizations into proprietary systems. In a world where data is growing faster than ever, we're here to ensure every company can turn that data into value on their own terms."

Today's data lakes are massive, but not smart - and this is where the technical challenge lies. Everyone's storing their data in open formats, but compute costs are exploding and most queries are painfully slow. Qbeast solves this with drop-in indexing that delivers sub-second performance and cost savings, without locking you into a new stack. In production environments, Qbeast has already delivered query speedups of 2–6x and compute cost reductions of up to 70% for workloads in finance, healthcare, and retail.

"There is an undesirable compute cost hidden in the data layout that has been highly neglected by the market for data lakehouses," shared Flavio Junqueira, CTO of Qbeast and co-creator of Apache ZooKeeper and Apache BookKeeper. "Our technology enables customers across verticals to reduce or even eliminate such costs in a manner that embraces the openness of the data lakehouse stack and that is both engine and format neutral."

The team behind Qbeast includes heavy hitters in distributed systems and open data. The company's core technology is rooted in research conducted by Cesare Cugnasco, CSO of Qbeast and Paola Pardo during their time at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, where breakthrough work in multi-dimensional indexing laid the foundation for today's platform. Unlike closed platforms that require vendor lock-in or significant rewrites, Qbeast plays natively with the tools data teams already use, serving organizations across finance, retail, healthcare and beyond — any team using open formats to power analytics, AI, or business intelligence at scale.

"We believe every organization, not just the tech elite, should be able to extract value from their data without incurring massive cloud costs or hiring a team of engineers to tune performance," added Satya.

“We believe Qbeast is solving a fundamental challenge in the modern data stack. In a context of data volume explosion, their multi-dimensional indexing layer has the potential to become critical for every company moving to a lakehouse model”, said Juan Santamaría, CEO and Managing Partner at HWK TechInvestment.

“By empowering enterprises to unlock more value from their data with less complexity and expense, Qbeast aims to become the cornerstone indexing layer for modern data stacks”. said Sébastien Lefebvre, Partner & Deep Tech Investor at Elaia.

Looking ahead, Qbeast plans to extend its platform with auto-tuning, adaptive indexing, and deeper engine support across cloud providers and use cases. The goal: to become the default indexing layer for open Lakehouse architectures and unlock a future where data-driven innovation doesn't come at the cost of performance, scalability, or sanity.

SixSense Raises $8.5 Mn Funding to Power AI-Driven Semiconductor Manufacturing

SixSense, a pioneer in AI for semiconductor manufacturing, announced a new round of funding led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia India & SEA), with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital, Febe, and others.

Founded by engineers Akanksha Jagwani and Avni Agarwal, SixSense is tackling one of the semiconductor industry’s biggest challenges: turning raw production data from defect images to equipment signals into real-time intelligence that helps factories prevent quality issues, improve throughput, and produce more good chips from the same line.

With this new funding, SixSense will:

• Expand into chipmaking hubs across Malaysia, Taiwan, and the U.S.
• Partner with more AI-first inspection equipment makers to deliver deeper on-the-ground AI integration
• Invest in next-gen R&D — moving from isolated inspection tools to line-level intelligence, where multiple machines talk to each other through AI to improve factory-wide decisions in real time

As demand surges from AI, 5G, IoT, and electric vehicles, chipmakers are racing to build smaller, more complex chips — with far less room for error. “Making a single chip is one of the most demanding feats in modern manufacturing — it happens in cleanrooms thousands of times cleaner than hospital operating rooms and relies on precise coordination across hundreds of machines and thousands of ultra-sensitive steps,” said Akanksha Jagwani, Co-founder and CEO of SixSense. “Imagine trying to build a skyscraper out of microscopic Lego blocks, where a tiny shift in one brick — invisible to the eye — can collapse the whole structure. That’s what chip factories face every day.” Spotting early signs of failure before they spiral into costly defects or delays is a big challenge and that’s where AI becomes essential."

SixSense AI gives engineers the early warnings they need to fix problems. Their platform analyzes massive volumes of production data to detect, classify, and predict failure patterns — helping factories shift from reactive inspection to proactive control.

With SixSense, manufacturers can:

• Catch rare, small, and critical defects that humans often miss. 
• Avoid over-rejecting good chips — improving usable output (i.e., yield)
• Predict process drifts before they cause bigger failures

“Unlike traditional AI tools, SixSense is hardware-agnostic, explainable, and built for engineers — not data scientists,” said Avni Agarwal, Co-founder and CTO. “Process engineers can fine-tune models using their own fab data, deploy them in under two days, and trust the results — all without writing a single line of code. That’s what makes the platform both powerful and practical.”

SixSense already powers inspection lines at leading semiconductor manufacturers such as GlobalFoundries and JCET. Their customers have processed 100 million chips through the SixSense system and typically seen benefits such as : 30% faster production cycles 1%–2% higher yield by recovering chips that would’ve been wrongly rejected
Up to 20% fewer errors and >90% less manual effort

The platform is well integrated with major inspection equipment vendors that collectively cover over 60% of the market.

“We started with one step in the process — defect review — and quickly realized customers needed more,” said Akanksha. “Now we’re building the intelligence layer for the entire production line. It’s the foundation every modern fab will need.”

About SixSense: SixSense is an AI-powered platform transforming semiconductor manufacturing by turning raw production data into real-time factory intelligence that helps factories prevent quality issues, improve throughput, and produce more good chips. Founded by engineers Akanksha Jagwani and Avni Agarwal, the company helps chipmakers detect defects early, improve yield, and prevent costly production issues across increasingly complex fabrication lines. Unlike traditional AI tools, SixSense is hardware-agnostic, explainable, and built for process engineers - enabling quick deployment without coding. Backed by Peak XV’s Surge, Alpha Intelligence Capital, and Febe, SixSense is building the intelligence layer every modern fab needs from single inspection points to AI-driven line-level control.

Online Fitness Portal FITTR Raises USD $2 Mn from Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s Scale-Up Program

• Fittr is one of the largest online fitness communities with over 850,000 members


• Fittr’s mission is to create a community of a billion people engaged in physical, mental and spiritual well-being

In major news for the Indian startup community, Pune-based fitness startup, Fittr (formerly SQUATS Fitness Pvt. Ltd.) has raised USD 2 million in Pre-Series A funding from Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for early-stage startups in India and Southeast Asia.

Fittr was founded in January 2016 by Jitendra Chouksey, a software engineer who transformed himself while working a 12-hour/day IT job. Today, Fittr is one of the largest online fitness communities in the world, with over 850,000 members. The company was bootstrapped and has been profitable since inception, achieving a cumulative revenue of $13 million USD.

Surge has partnered with several high-growth startups in the past year. A number of Surge startups have already raised USD 250M+ in financing rounds following the completion of the program. The investment in Fittr comes on the back of the fitness startup’s impressive growth, and is a testament to the firm’s confidence in its founders and market potential.

Speaking on this latest development, founder Jitendra Chouksey said, “Fittr has been an incredible journey for everyone involved. When I was working in IT, everyone around me wanted to know the secret to my fitness levels. I started a WhatsApp group way back in 2014 to help train a few people. Today, Fittr has become one of the most engaging and informative fitness groups on Facebook – loved equally by experts and coaches, as well as those just starting out on their fitness journey. Our vision is to become the leading global social platform and marketplace for fitness coaching, and the confidence shown by Surge in this vision is a shot in the arm for Fittr.”

Offering a freemium model, the Fittr app was launched in 2018 and is a one-stop-shop for all health and fitness needs. Fittr provides free access to diet and training tools, over 5000 healthy recipes, live fitness sessions with experts, Q&A with coaches, and connects users to a community of fitness experts and enthusiasts. Users can get personalized nutrition and exercise plans to reach their health and fitness goals by paying a small premium. The customised plans are provided by one of Fittr’s 200 certified coaches, who also come from the Fittr community, with their own stories of transformation. Subscribed users get an in-depth consultation call with the coach, as well as weekly check-ups on their progress via the app.

Co-founder Sonal Singh who is an LSE graduate & who previously worked as a strategy consultant with Deloitte adds, “At the core of Fittr is the community. We’ve grown organically through word-of-mouth and transformation photos shared by Facebook group members. So far, we’ve transformed over 100,000 people and 30% of our user base is global, spread across the US, UK, Australia, UAE and Canada. The central philosophy underpinning Fittr is to empower the end-user to transform and inspire others to get fit.”

Fittr’s other co-founders include Jyoti Dabas, an IIM graduate & former Citigroup analyst, Bala Krishna Reddy, a University of North Carolina graduate and former developer at Ford Motors, and Rohit Chattopadhyay, a management graduate and former business-owner. Coming from diverse backgrounds, the five founders are united by their cause to help make people fit.

Seekify Raises $1.5 Mn Seed Funding from Sequoia Capital India's rapid scale-up program Surge

Customer Experience SaaS platform Seekify has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program Surge with participation from angel investors, Nishant Rao (Founding Partner at Avatar Venture Partners), Gaurav Agarwal (1mg) and Sameer Maheshwari (HealthKart).

Seekify, which has made significant progress since its launch, is now available in Beta for enterprises - and the company has started multiple pilots with customers across the world. With the fundraise, Seekify will invest in building world-class technology and hiring new talent across functions.   

[caption id="attachment_139625" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Seekify Co-founders[/caption]

Seekify can be easily integrated with different softwares of businesses, allowing them to aggregate all the data that drives their Customer Experience (CX). The platform helps teams to set clear goals and KPIs, providing data-driven insights using AI and ML. Finally, it automates the workflows needed to improve the customer experience - hence closing the loop. Overall, the goal is to simplify the complexities of CX and deliver great customer experience through innovative technology.

Nishant Rao, Founding Partner at Avatar Venture Partners said, “I know Ajeet and Arihant from when Freshworks acquired their startup. I’ve worked with them personally and have seen them achieve great things during their time at Freshworks. They’re an incredible team - you don’t often see such a strong combination of product engineering and sales prowess in founding teams. It is impressive to see what they have accomplished in a short time with Seekify. Their understanding of CX space, ability to build global SaaS products and strong international GTM experience make them do very well globally.”

Commenting on the announcement, Arihant Jain, co-founder and CEO of Seekify said, “We're super excited to be a part of the Surge Program. We have a lot of respect for the Sequoia team, and the business value they bring on the table apart from funds. We couldn't have found a better partner for Seekify. Now the greater responsibility is to build a superstar team of people who believe in the vision of Seekify. We believe in People over Product over Profits - great people will build a great product and profit will follow.”

He further added, “In today’s personalised economy, customers simply expect more - they expect you to know everything about them and tailor their experience accordingly. For any business, Customer Experience is the only true differentiator today. We are solving the problem of delivering the right Customer Experience.”

Software as a Service (SaaS) has become an essential part of how modern businesses operate. According to a report, the SaaS market is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.2% during the forecast period 2018-2023. In fact, 2018 was a poster year for SaaS organizations as a whole because it saw several high-growth SaaS companies going public. 

Global spending on customer experience (CX) technology is forecast to increase from around 500 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 to over 640 billion by 2022 as per the report. The global Customer Experience Management Market is projected to grow from USD 7.8 billion in 2019 to USD 14.5 billion by 2024, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.3% during the forecast period.

About Seekify:

Seekify was founded in June 2019 by two serial entrepreneurs Arihant Jain and Ajeet Kushwaha. The duo were the founding members in the launch of 1mg and HealthKart and built ‘Joe Hukum’, a global pioneering chatbot SaaS platform in 2015 that was acquired by Freshworks in 2017.

Seekify can be easily integrated with different softwares of businesses, allowing them to aggregate all the data that drives their Customer Experience (CX). The platform helps teams to set clear goals and KPIs, providing data-driven insights using AI and ML. Finally, it automates the workflows needed to improve the customer experience - hence closing the loop. Overall, the goal is to simplify the complexities of CX and deliver a great customer experience through innovative technology.