Meta Muse Charm: The Keychain AI Gadget That Could Change How India Uses Apps

by Aalam Rohile September 24, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Meta unveiled Muse Charm at Connect on September 23, a 5G gadget with a roughly 2-inch touchscreen built to carry its Muse AI agent.
It ships in December with no price announced, and Zuckerberg said the team still had to finalise the component layout.
Muse is US-only for now. Indian founders should watch how agents pull shopping and tasks away from apps, and prepare early.

Meta has given its AI agent a body, and you can clip it to your keys.

At Connect in Menlo Park on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg closed the show with a “one more thing” reveal: Muse Charm, a small gadget built only for talking to Muse, Meta’s personal AI agent. Meta says it ships in December.

For Indian readers, the gadget is the smaller story. The bigger one is where AI is heading: away from app icons and toward an agent you simply talk to.

A Tamagotchi with a 5G modem

Charm has a touchscreen of roughly 2 inches and built-in 5G, according to Technology.org. A fingerprint sensor wakes it, and your Muse avatar lives on the screen. Reporters can’t agree on its size, comparing it to an AirPods case in some reports and an Apple Watch in others. Engadget’s Cherlynn Low, as relayed by Gear Live, said it feels like a Tamagotchi crossed with an AI wearable.

Close-up of the Meta Muse Charm touchscreen and wrist cord

Zuckerberg pitched it as the option for people who don’t wear smart glasses, packing Muse into something that “fits on a keychain and is always available to talk to.”

Now the gaps. Meta hasn’t announced a price. Zuckerberg said his team still had to finalise the component layout, and Tom’s Guide’s live notes suggest only a few units exist so far. Reports also differ on whether Charm needs a phone nearby, so treat connectivity as unconfirmed until Meta publishes specs.

The agent is the real product

Charm only makes sense because Muse already exists. Meta launched Muse on September 8 in the US, on iOS, Android, muse.ai and WhatsApp, for users 18 and older. It reads and sends email, books travel, fills in forms and completes purchases, with payments running through Link by Stripe on one-time-use cards.

Early traction looks strong. CNBC reported roughly 730,000 downloads in about five days and 2.5 million in thirteen. That gives Charm an edge Humane’s AI Pin never had. Humane built the device and the AI together, while Charm only has to be a good front door to an agent that’s already live.

Where India fits, and where it doesn’t yet

Here’s the catch. India isn’t in the Muse rollout, and Meta hasn’t said when that will change. It hasn’t said which countries get Charm either. So the “could” in our headline is doing real work.

WhatsApp is why this still matters here. Muse already runs inside it in the US, and WhatsApp is where Indian small businesses, customer support and daily chatter already live. If Meta brings Muse over, an agent inside that app could pull tasks away from standalone apps. That’s StartupIndiaX’s read, not a Meta announcement.

Graphic showing the ways to access Meta's Muse AI agent, including WhatsApp and the upcoming Muse Charm

Indian founders are already building this way

Muse isn’t the first agent to promise this in India. Krutrim launched Kruti in June 2025, an agentic assistant meant to book cabs, order food and make payments.

On hardware, Sarvam AI showed its Kaze smart glasses in February as a made-in-India alternative to Ray-Ban Meta, with a May sale date. Devices are capital-intensive and operationally complex compared with selling software APIs, as Indian Startup News noted.

If agents start shopping for your customers

If agents do the buying, your homepage and app stop being the only place a sale happens. Markets have noticed. Bloomberg reported that bank, insurer and online travel stocks slid on Tuesday over fears that agents like Muse could erode habit-driven business. Shopify has also partnered with Meta on Muse checkout, per Yahoo Finance.

For a founder, the homework is unglamorous: clean product data, fast checkout, clear return terms and a real WhatsApp presence. An agent can only buy from a brand it can read. The same shift is already visible in browsers.

Not everyone is sold. TechCrunch noted that AI pendants have become something of a cliche, and Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar joked about privacy trouble ahead. That’s not silly when the device hangs an agent that can spend your money off your keychain.

Three things to watch before December

Price: Meta hasn’t announced one, and it will decide whether Charm becomes a real product or a stage demo.
Specs: Battery life and whether Charm works without a paired phone are still open, so wait for Meta’s full details.
India: Neither Muse nor Charm has a confirmed Indian launch. Watch Meta’s country announcements before planning around either.

Would you carry an AI agent on your keychain? Tell us in the comments, and explore more AI stories on StartupIndiaX.

FAQs

What is Meta Muse Charm?

Muse Charm is a keychain-sized gadget with a roughly 2-inch touchscreen and built-in 5G. It exists to let you talk to Meta’s Muse AI agent without opening a phone app or wearing smart glasses.

When will Meta Muse Charm launch?

Meta says Charm will ship in December 2026, in time for the holidays. Zuckerberg said the team was still finalising the component layout, so treat the date as a target rather than a promise.

How much will Muse Charm cost?

Meta hasn’t announced a price. Muse itself is free for most everyday use, with $20 and $100 monthly plans for heavier use, but those figures don’t tell us what the hardware will cost.

Is Meta Muse Charm available in India?

Not confirmed. Muse launched only in the US, India isn’t part of the rollout, and Meta hasn’t said which countries will get Charm or when Muse might expand.

What can Meta’s Muse AI agent do?

Muse handles tasks like reading and sending email, booking travel, filling in forms and completing purchases. It runs on iOS, Android, the web and WhatsApp in the US, and users must be 18 or older.

Does Muse Charm work without a phone?

Unclear. One report says its built-in 5G lets it connect on its own, while others note Meta hasn’t confirmed whether it needs a paired phone. Wait for official specs.

September 24, 2026 0 comments 82 views

Funding EV News

Ultraviolette Funding: $85 Million From Yali Capital, TDK Ventures and Lip-Bu Tan

The Bengaluru EV maker says the money will scale production, fund next-gen platforms and help it enter the US in 2027. Here's what's confirmed, and what isn't.

by Aalam Rohile September 24, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Ultraviolette raised $85 million led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures, with Lip-Bu Tan investing. Valuation and individual cheque sizes weren’t disclosed.
The money goes into scaling the F77, X-47, Tesseract and Shockwave, plus next-gen platforms and a US entry targeted for 2027.
Founders should watch the Hosur factory ramp and Tesseract’s early 2027 launch, the two tests of whether this capital converts into volume.

Bengaluru’s Ultraviolette has raised $85 million, and the list of people writing the cheques is as interesting as the number. A deep-tech fund and the venture arm of a Japanese electronics group are leading the round. A semiconductor industry heavyweight is investing too.

The company announced the round on Wednesday, 23 September 2026. It plans to spend the money on production, new vehicle platforms and a push into the US, which it’s targeting for 2027.

Who’s backing Ultraviolette this time

Yali Capital, a deep-tech fund, and TDK Ventures co-led the round. Lip-Bu Tan also invested. He’s best known as Intel’s CEO, though the company’s announcement introduces him as chairman of Walden International and an advisor to Ultraviolette. Existing investors joined as well.

Ultraviolette was founded in 2016 by Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan. Earlier backers include Lingotto, Qualcomm Ventures, Zoho Corporation, TVS Motor and Speciale Invest.

Here’s what the company hasn’t said: the valuation, how much each investor put in, or what stake the round buys. Some outlets are calling it a Series E, but the announcement doesn’t use that label. Entrackr reports the new money follows $66 million from an ongoing Series E, including $21 million from TDK Ventures and $45 million from Zoho and Lingotto. Until the company confirms the round’s name, we’d treat “Series E” as unconfirmed.

Where the money is going

Ultraviolette says the capital will go into scaling production of its two current motorcycles, the F77 and the X-47 Crossover, and two upcoming vehicles: the Tesseract scooter and the Shockwave enduro motorcycle. The rest is earmarked for next-generation EV platforms built on what the company calls its vertically integrated stack, covering batteries, power electronics, vehicle architecture and software.

Ultraviolette Tesseract electric scooter, due to launch in early 2027

The Tesseract is the launch to watch. Yali’s Ganapathy Subramaniam said it arrives early next year, but the announcement doesn’t give a date. In August 2025, the company said the Tesseract and Shockwave together had drawn more than 70,000 paid bookings, worth over $120 million in order value. Those are company-stated numbers from a year ago, and bookings aren’t deliveries.

The Hosur factory matters as much as the cash

About a week before this round, Ultraviolette announced its BIGGA (Big Global Ambition) Factory at SIPCOT Industrial Park in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. The plan is to reach 250,000 vehicles a year in phases, with infrastructure that can scale to 500,000 if demand holds. That 500,000 is a ceiling, not today’s output.

The Tamil Nadu government has put the investment at ₹779 crore, according to electrive, and the company expects around 2,000 jobs in the first phase. That’s a similar order of magnitude to this round, though the company hasn’t said how it will split the money between the plant, new products and overseas expansion.

Ultraviolette BIGGA Factory planned at SIPCOT Industrial Park in Hosur, Tamil Nadu

The location makes sense on paper. Hosur already hosts plants belonging to TVS Motor and Ather Energy, which gives a newcomer access to an established supplier base. Ather and Ola Electric, two other Bengaluru-headquartered EV makers, are now listed companies, and both build in Tamil Nadu as well, Ola at Krishnagiri. Ultraviolette is still private and has built its name on premium performance motorcycles, so this isn’t a like-for-like scale comparison. But Tamil Nadu keeps showing up on the factory map of Bengaluru’s EV startups.

The US bet, and what we still don’t know

Ultraviolette wants to enter the US in 2027, then broaden into Latin America and South-East Asia. Today it sells in India and 20 European countries, including Germany, France, Spain, the UK and Italy. Business Standard reports that international sales are around 15% of volumes, and the company expects that to rise to 25% as it scales globally.

The announcement doesn’t say which models go to the US first, or whether 2027 means a full launch or a limited start. That’s the biggest open question in the story.

Why we read this as a technology bet

Our read: this isn’t a growth-at-any-cost round. Look at what the backers said they were buying. Yali’s Ganapathy Subramaniam pointed to the in-house engineering, from battery and powertrain to software and radar, and to a focus on rider safety. Lip-Bu Tan said he likes Ultraviolette’s “willingness to take on genuinely difficult problems.”

TDK Ventures is the corporate venture arm of Japanese electronics giant TDK Corporation, per TechCrunch, which reported its $21 million backing in 2025. So the round pairs a deep-tech fund, a strategic investor from the components world and a semiconductor veteran. For a hardware startup, that mix says the pitch was engineering depth and IP, not just unit sales.

The risks are just as clear. Ramping a new plant, launching a scooter and entering the US are three big jobs, and the announcement doesn’t say how they’ll be sequenced. Execution, not funding, is the question now.

What hardware founders can take from this

If you’re building anything with a battery or a motor, three things stand out:

Yali cited in-house battery, software and radar work. Lead your pitch with the engineering and IP.
Phase your capacity story: a 250,000-unit first target with a 500,000 ceiling tied to demand. Show investors both numbers.
Read funding news for what it leaves out. Valuation, stakes and cheque sizes are private for now, so don’t quote them as fact.

What do you make of Ultraviolette’s US plan? Tell us in the comments, share this with a founder who’s building hardware, and explore the free Founder Toolkit if you’re planning your own raise.

FAQs

How much did Ultraviolette raise?

Ultraviolette raised $85 million in a round led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures, announced on 23 September 2026. Lip-Bu Tan and existing investors also participated. The company hasn’t disclosed its valuation.

Who invested in Ultraviolette’s latest round?

Yali Capital and TDK Ventures led. Lip-Bu Tan, chairman of Walden International and an advisor to the company, invested alongside existing investors. Lingotto, Qualcomm Ventures, Zoho, TVS Motor and Speciale Invest are among its earlier backers.

What will Ultraviolette do with the funding?

It plans to scale production of the F77 and X-47, prepare the Tesseract scooter and Shockwave enduro motorcycle, develop next-generation EV platforms, and expand internationally, including a US entry targeted for 2027.

When will Ultraviolette enter the US market?

The company is targeting 2027 for US entry, alongside expansion in Latin America and South-East Asia. It hasn’t shared which models it will bring first or what form the launch will take.

Where is Ultraviolette’s new factory?

The BIGGA Factory is planned at SIPCOT Industrial Park in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. It’s designed to reach 250,000 vehicles a year in phases, with infrastructure that can scale to 500,000 if demand supports it.

Is the $85 million a Series E round?

The company’s announcement doesn’t label it. Some outlets call it Series E, while Entrackr says it follows $66 million raised in an ongoing Series E. Treat the label as unconfirmed for now.

September 24, 2026 0 comments 75 views

Why India Voice AI Startups are suddenly attracting Big Money

AI & DeepTech Funding News

Why India’s Voice AI Startups Are Suddenly Attracting Big Money

Three things converged at once, better voice models, enterprise pressure to cut call-centre costs, and a policy push toward sovereign AI, and investors noticed all three together.

by Aalam Rohile September 23, 2026

3 min read

Summary

Indian voice AI startups have raised over ₹280 crore in the past year, led by Ringg AI, Gnani.ai and Navana.ai.
Ringg AI’s Series A now stands at $15.5 million after Peak XV Partners joined the round in August.
Founders should expect consolidation ahead, investors are already flagging that smaller players will get absorbed by bigger platforms.

Call floors across India have a new kind of employee on the line, and she never takes a sick day. She answers in whichever language the customer prefers, she doesn’t lose her temper, and the CRM dashboard logs her as another agent doing her job. She’s not human. She’s a voice AI model, and right now, the startups building her are raising money faster than almost anyone expected.

In the last year, Indian voice AI startups have collectively pulled in more than ₹280 crore across pre-Series A and Series A rounds, according to reporting from The Ken. That’s not a single mega-round skewing the number. It’s a spread of smaller, focused bets across several companies building for the same basic problem: enterprises want to automate calls without sounding like a phone tree from 2009.

The money behind the moment

Start with Ringg AI, the Bengaluru startup that’s become something of a poster child for the category. It raised $5.5 million in a Series A round in January, led by Arkam Ventures with Groww’s Founder Fund, Kunal Shah and White Venture Capital also writing checks. Seven months later, Peak XV Partners came in with another $10 million, taking the round to $15.5 million total.

Ringg AI co-founders Kali CV, Siddharth Tripathi and Utkarsh Shukla, whose company raised $15.5 million in Series A funding

That second check matters more than the number suggests. Ringg didn’t just get a bigger investor, it got one of India’s most selective venture firms betting that voice AI has moved past pilot projects into something enterprises will actually pay to keep running. The company’s agents now handle roughly 20 million call attempts a month for clients including CRED, Flipkart, Practo and Policybazaar, and it’s pushing past voice into WhatsApp and browser-based agents too.

Gnani.ai, also out of Bengaluru, tells a similar story from a different angle. It raised ₹68 crore (about $7.17 million) in March led by Aavishkaar Capital, then followed up with a further tranche later in the year. Founded back in 2016 by Ganesh Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj, Gnani.ai has had time to build genuine technical depth, and it recently launched Inya VoiceOS, a 5-billion-parameter voice-to-voice model, at the AI Impact Summit in February. The company says it processes over 30 million voice interactions daily across more than 200 enterprise customers.

Then there’s Navana.ai, which raised ₹40 crore in a Series A round in September led by Ronnie Screwvala, with Antler India and Sandeep Singhal also participating. Navana is chasing a narrower but higher-stakes lane: sovereign voice AI for regulated BFSI enterprises, where data residency and compliance aren’t optional extras.

Three different companies, three different investors, three rounds inside the same twelve months. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a sector investors have decided is ready.

Why voice, and why now

The obvious answer is that AI models finally got good enough. Latency dropped, multilingual support improved, and voice agents stopped sounding like they were reading a script off a teleprompter. But the more interesting reason is what’s happening on the enterprise side.

India’s call centres are enormous, and staffing them is expensive and hard to scale during demand spikes. A Truecaller study found that more than 76% of Indian consumers still prefer talking to businesses over a phone call, rather than chat or email, which means voice can’t simply be automated away with a chatbot. Someone has to actually answer the phone convincingly, in the customer’s language, and get the job done.

That’s the gap Ringg, Gnani.ai and Navana are all building into, and it’s also the reason their pitch to investors isn’t “AI that talks.” It’s AI that completes a workflow: onboarding, collections, appointment booking, KYC checks, without a human needing to step in unless something goes wrong.

Layer government policy on top of that. The India AI Impact Summit in February pushed hard on sovereign, voice-first models trained on Indian languages, and the IVCA has committed ₹500 crore across 31 India-built AI startups showcased at MeitY’s Impact AI PitchFest. Voice AI sits right at the intersection of what enterprises want and what the policy conversation is rewarding.

The global signal India can’t ignore

It’s not just domestic capital paying attention. Wispr Flow, a US-based voice dictation startup, raised $280 million in a Series B round in August at a $2 billion valuation, and buried in that announcement was a detail that matters for Indian founders: India is Wispr Flow’s second-largest market by users, with monthly growth outpacing most other regions.

That’s a foreign company validating Indian demand for voice-first tools without even building for India specifically. It’s a reminder that the opportunity here isn’t only about serving Indian enterprises. It’s about a country where voice remains the default interface, watched closely by investors who don’t usually write India-specific checks.

Zoom out further and the broader Indian AI funding picture backs this up. Indian AI startups crossed $1 billion raised in the first half of 2026 alone, with Sarvam AI’s $234 million round pushing it to unicorn status. Voice AI is a slice of that wave, but it’s arguably the slice with the clearest, most immediate enterprise use case.

What this means if you’re building or investing here

For founders, the lesson isn’t “build a voice AI startup,” it’s narrower than that. The companies raising real money aren’t selling novelty demos. They’re selling measurable outcomes: resolution time, cost per call, automation rate. Ringg AI’s founder Siddharth Tripathi put it bluntly when describing what enterprise buyers actually care about, saying customers buy the product because “onboarding improves, resolution times fall”, not because the demo sounds impressive.

For investors, the read is a little more cautious. Reporting on the space has flagged that most deployments still require multiple rounds of iteration, pilots, script tuning, language adaptation, before they scale cleanly. And there’s a real expectation of consolidation ahead, with smaller voice AI startups eventually getting absorbed by bigger platforms and enterprises building the capability in-house. The money flowing in now doesn’t mean every player survives the next eighteen months.

That’s not a reason for founders to sit this out. It’s a reason to be precise about what problem you’re actually solving, and for whom, before the market decides that for you.

FAQs

Why are Indian voice AI startups raising so much money right now?

A combination of better AI models, strong enterprise demand to automate customer calls, and government policy support for sovereign AI has converged in the same period, making the category attractive to investors who were more cautious a year ago.

How much have Indian voice AI startups raised recently?

Collectively, Indian voice AI startups have raised more than ₹280 crore over the past year, spread across companies like Ringg AI, Gnani.ai and Navana.ai, according to reporting from The Ken.

Who are the leading Indian voice AI startups right now?

Ringg AI, Gnani.ai and Navana.ai are among the most funded, each targeting slightly different enterprise use cases from general customer automation to regulated BFSI compliance.

Is voice AI funding in India sustainable, or is it a bubble?

Investors and founders quoted in industry reporting expect some consolidation as the market matures, with smaller startups likely getting absorbed by larger platforms. The funding is real, but not every company will scale independently.

Does global investor interest in voice AI affect Indian startups?

Yes. Wispr Flow’s $280 million round highlighted India as its second-largest market by users, signalling that international capital is watching Indian voice-AI demand even when it’s not funding Indian companies directly.

September 23, 2026 0 comments 100 views

Startup Learning Founder Toolkit

How Much Equity Should You Give an Investor? The Real Numbers for Indian Founders

A plain-English guide to pricing your first investor's stake, with the formula, rupee examples and the India-specific rules that change the maths.

by Aalam Rohile September 21, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Most pre-seed and seed rounds give up roughly 10% to 20%. Above 25% at pre-seed, stop and check your valuation or raise size.
Equity = investment ÷ post-money valuation. Rs 1 crore at Rs 9 crore pre-money buys 10%. At Rs 4 crore pre-money, it buys 20%.
Plan for the next round too. The median founding team holds about 56% after seed and 36% after Series A, per Carta.

Someone finally wants to write you a cheque. Then the real question lands: how much equity should you give an investor?

Get it wrong and you’ll feel it for years. Give away too much early and there’s little left for your co-founders, your first hires and the investors who arrive later. Give away too little and the round may never close.

Here’s the short answer. At pre-seed and seed, most rounds sit between 10% and 20%, and going past 25% in a first round is a sign to stop and check your maths. But the percentage is never the real decision. It’s the result of two numbers you control: how much you raise, and what your company is worth before the money arrives.

The one formula behind every equity offer

Strip away the jargon and every offer comes down to two lines of arithmetic.

Post-money valuation = Pre-money valuation + Investment

Investor’s equity = Investment ÷ Post-money valuation

Pre-money is what your company is valued at before the cheque lands. Post-money is the value right after. So if you raise Rs 1 crore at a Rs 9 crore pre-money valuation, post-money is Rs 10 crore, and the investor owns 1 ÷ 10, which is 10%.

Now change only the valuation and watch the same cheque move.

Pre-money valuation	Post-money valuation	Investor gets
Rs 4 crore	Rs 5 crore	20%
Rs 5 crore	Rs 6 crore	16.7%
Rs 6 crore	Rs 7 crore	14.3%
Rs 9 crore	Rs 10 crore	10%
Rs 14 crore	Rs 15 crore	6.7%
Rs 19 crore	Rs 20 crore	5%

The same Rs 1 crore cheque can buy anywhere from 20% to 5%

Investor’s stake at different pre-money valuations. Only the valuation changes.

Formula: Investor’s equity = Investment / (Pre-money + Investment). The dark bar is the 10% example used in the article. Illustrative calculation, not legal or financial advice. Source: StartupIndiaX.

Same cheque, same investor, and the stake swings from 20% to 5%. That’s why the valuation deserves more of your negotiating energy than the percentage does.

You can run it backwards too. If an investor offers Rs 50 lakh for 10%, the post-money valuation is Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 lakh ÷ 0.10), which makes the pre-money Rs 4.5 crore. Plenty of first-time founders agree to a percentage without checking which valuation it quietly locks in.

So how much equity should you give an investor in India?

There’s no official rule, and no single Indian median you can fully trust. Still, the published ranges line up more than you’d expect.

Stage	Typical equity given	Where it comes from
Accelerators and incubators	5% to 10%, for roughly Rs 10 lakh to Rs 25 lakh	myHQ seed funding guide
Pre-seed	10% to 20%, with most rounds at 15% to 18%	Capwave, 2026
Seed	10% to 20% in most Indian rounds, median near 19% in 2025	myHQ, FundVault
Series A	Roughly 15% to 25%	SheetVenture

Treat these as a sanity check, not a target. Capwave’s framework puts seed at 18% to 25%, and much of the published data comes from US rounds or advisory firms, so your sector, city and traction matter more than any average.

One rule of thumb does hold up. If a pre-seed round asks for more than 25%, something’s off. Either the valuation is too low or you’re raising too much too soon. Strong traction, an experienced team and several investors competing for the deal usually push you toward the lower end.

Start from what you can afford to give up

Most founders begin with the raise (“I need Rs 1 crore”) and let the investor set the percentage. Flip it.

Maximum raise = Maximum dilution you’ll accept × Post-money valuation

Say you won’t go beyond 15% this round, and you can defend a Rs 6 crore post-money valuation. Your ceiling is 0.15 × Rs 6 crore, which is Rs 90 lakh. If your plan truly needs Rs 1 crore, you have two honest options: raise the valuation with better evidence, or trim the plan.

Raise what your next milestone needs, not the biggest number an investor will sign. Indian seed guides give the same advice: if Rs 2 crore gets you to your milestones, don’t raise Rs 5 crore.

The bill that arrives later: the next round and the ESOP pool

Here’s what surprises first-time founders. The 20% you sell today isn’t the only cut you’ll take. Every later round shrinks everyone who already holds shares, and investors usually want an employee option pool (ESOP) set aside before their money goes in. That pool comes out of the existing holders’ share, not the new investor’s.

Try it with two co-founders who own the company 50/50.

Seed: Rs 2 crore at Rs 8 crore pre-money. Post-money is Rs 10 crore, so the investor gets 20%. A 10% option pool is created before the round, so the founders together end at 70%.
Series A: Rs 10 crore at Rs 40 crore pre-money. Post-money is Rs 50 crore, so the new investor gets 20% and everyone else shrinks to 80% of what they held.

The rule is simple: Ownership after a round = Ownership before × (1 − new investor’s %)

Holder	After seed	After Series A
Founders (together)	70%	56%
Seed investor	20%	16%
ESOP pool	10%	8%
Series A investor	0%	20%

Each investor took 20%, yet the founders slid from 100% to 56%, or 28% each. And that’s before any pool top-up at Series A, which would push it lower still.

This isn’t a quirk of one example. Carta’s 2026 Founder Ownership Report shows the median founding team keeps about 56% after seed and 36% after Series A. By Series C, founders hold 16.1%, less than the 16.8% held by the employee pool. Software and AI founders tend to keep more than those in physical industries: 37.5% against 30.5% after Series A.

Founders keep about 36% by Series A, and less than the ESOP pool by Series C

Median share of fully diluted equity held by the founding team, by funding stage.

Source: Carta Founder Ownership Report 2026 (median, fully diluted). Series B is not shown because a primary-source figure was not verified. Actual ownership varies by sector and round.

Want to run your own rounds? Plug them into the Dilution Calculator and watch a live cap table across Seed, Series A and Series B, option pool included.

What’s different when you raise in India

Three things change the maths, or at least the paperwork.

Angel tax is gone. For years, Indian founders priced rounds with one eye on angel tax, which taxed share premium above a “fair” valuation under Section 56(2)(viib). The Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 removed it for shares issued from 1 April 2025. Older assessments can still be alive, and FEMA and valuation rules still apply, so read this explainer before you assume everything is simple.

The instrument decides when you learn your percentage. In a priced round, you know today. With convertible instruments, you find out later. Most SAFE-style money in India lands as CCPS (compulsorily convertible preference shares), and the Indian version of the SAFE, the iSAFE, is structured as CCPS. Convertible notes are open only to DPIIT-recognised startups, with a minimum of Rs 25 lakh per investor per tranche. Advisers also say a plain US-style SAFE shouldn’t carry foreign money into an Indian company.

A cap is a ceiling, not a percentage. With a valuation cap, you agree a maximum valuation instead of a stake. If it works as a post-money cap, Rs 1 crore on a Rs 10 crore cap converts to roughly 10%. Stack a few caps and the total can surprise you badly at Series A.

Now look at a real Indian round. Baby-care quick-commerce startup Kiddo recently raised Rs 12.5 crore in a pre-seed round led by Campus Fund. As reported, the announcement didn’t include ownership terms or a valuation, which is normal for a private round. So the cheque size alone tells you nothing about the percentage. Illustration only, not Kiddo’s actual terms: Rs 12.5 crore is 25% at a Rs 50 crore post-money valuation and 12.5% at Rs 100 crore.

Before you sell equity, check grants. The Startup India Seed Fund Scheme offers up to Rs 20 lakh in grants and up to Rs 50 lakh in soft loans through empanelled incubators, and our Government Scheme Finder filters 30+ central schemes by sector and stage.

Red flags before you sign

A first cheque above 25% at pre-seed. Go back to the valuation and the raise size.
Anyone asking for 51% or more. A holder above 50% can usually pass ordinary resolutions alone, and 75% is needed for special resolutions under the Companies Act. Early on, that’s handing over control.
A liquidation preference above 1x non-participating. Sell for Rs 10 crore with a Rs 2 crore investor holding 20% and a 2x participating preference: they take Rs 4 crore first, then 20% of the remaining Rs 6 crore. That’s Rs 5.2 crore, or 52% of the sale, for a 20% stake. 1x non-participating is the far friendlier standard.
Too many tiny cheques. A cap table crowded with small shareholders is a structural problem later investors notice.

A five-minute check before you say yes

Run your own numbers first. StartupIndiaX’s free Founder Toolkit has 9 no-login tools built for Indian numbers, and four of them fit this decision:

Startup Valuation Calculator: VC method, revenue multiple and scorecard, all in Rs crore.
Dilution Calculator: a live cap table across rounds.
Co-founder Equity Split Calculator: settle the founder split before investors look at it.
Indian VC and Investor Database: filter by sector, stage and cheque size.

You’ll find more guides in our Founder Toolkit section.

So, how much equity should you give an investor? Enough to fund your next milestone, priced at a valuation you can defend, and small enough that the round after this one still leaves you in charge. If you take three things into the negotiation:

Work out the valuation hidden inside any percentage before you agree to it.
Decide your maximum dilution first, then calculate the biggest raise it allows.
Model the next round now, ESOP pool included, so Series A holds no surprises.

Have a term sheet on your desk? Tell us the percentage you’ve been offered in the comments, no investor name needed. If this helped, share it with a founder who’s about to raise.

This article is general education, not legal or financial advice. Have a lawyer review any term sheet or shareholder agreement before you sign.

FAQs

What percentage should I give my investor?

There’s no fixed number, but most pre-seed and seed rounds fall between 10% and 20%. The exact figure is investment divided by post-money valuation, so it depends on how much you raise and how your startup is valued.

How much equity should I give for a Rs 1 crore investment?

It depends on valuation. At a Rs 9 crore pre-money valuation, Rs 1 crore buys 10%. At Rs 4 crore pre-money, the same cheque buys 20%. Divide the investment by the post-money valuation to check any offer.

Is 10% equity a lot for an investor?

Usually not. At pre-seed or seed, 10% is at the lower end of the typical 10% to 20% range. Whether it’s fair depends on the valuation it implies, so always work out the post-money number.

Can an investor take 51% of my company?

Legally, yes, if you agree to it. But a holder above 50% can usually pass ordinary resolutions alone, so you’d lose control. At early stages, this is a serious red flag. Talk to a lawyer before signing anything close.

What happens if I give away too much equity early?

Later rounds dilute you further, so founders can end up with too little to stay motivated or to hire with options. New investors may also hesitate. Capwave suggests pausing if a pre-seed round goes past 25%.

Does angel tax still apply when I raise money in India?

No, for shares issued from 1 April 2025. Section 56(2)(viib) was omitted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024. Older assessments for earlier raises can still be pending, and FEMA and valuation rules still apply.

September 21, 2026 0 comments 102 views

Funding News

Kiddo Raises Rs 12.5 Crore Betting That Quick Commerce Wasn’t Built for Parents

The Feeding India founder's baby-only quick commerce app enters a race that Peeko and OZi already lead.

by Aalam Rohile September 21, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Kiddo raised Rs 12.5 crore pre-seed, led by Campus Fund, to build a baby-only quick commerce app in Delhi NCR.
Peeko’s Rs 67.4 crore Series A and OZi’s $6.2 million round mean Kiddo enters an already funded race.
Founders should watch what Kiddo hasn’t disclosed: margin numbers, order volumes and valuation. Its curation edge is still unproven.

Diapers at night. Wipes before a flight. The right size of everything, right now. Baby shopping is urgent, and a wrong purchase costs trust fast.

That’s the gap Kiddo is going after. The Delhi NCR startup has raised Rs 12.5 crore in a pre-seed round led by Campus Fund, with a group of strategic angels also participating, according to its announcement on September 17. The money goes into customer acquisition, dark stores across Delhi NCR, technology and product, and hiring.

It’s a modest cheque next to what rivals have raised. The founder and the thesis are the real story.

A founder who has scaled something before

Kiddo’s founder and CEO is Ankit Kawatra, who started Feeding India in 2014 with Srishti Jain. In July 2019, Zomato announced it had acquired the organisation, which stayed a nonprofit while Zomato funded the team’s salaries. Entrackr reported that Feeding India had grown to 82 cities and 21,500 volunteers by then.

Kawatra later completed an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2023, according to the company. Kiddo followed in 2025.

Campus Fund founder and CEO Richa Bajpai cited his experience taking companies from zero to one, and his own life as a parent of two toddlers, as reasons to back him.

The bet: fast isn’t the same as right

Here’s Kawatra’s argument. Quick commerce can put hundreds of types of chips and sodas at your door in minutes, he says, yet young parents in Tier 1 India still juggle multiple platforms that take days. Those platforms, in his words, were “never built for them”. He adds that the newer fast-delivery apps haven’t focused on curation.

Kiddo’s answer is an app built only for babies and young kids. The company says its edge rests on three things: habit-building triggers, age-based curation and a community-led growth engine. In practice, that means recommending products by a child’s stage, so parents aren’t guessing at sizes and ages.

The company says it has curated more than 30,000 SKUs across essentials and fashion. It’s live in parts of Delhi NCR and reportedly promises delivery in around 30 minutes. It targets parents with high household incomes and plans multiple dark stores by year end.

One claim needs care. Kiddo says its blended gross margin is significantly higher than typical horizontal grocery quick commerce. No figure came with it, so treat it as the company’s claim for now.

There’s a practical test hiding in that promise. A parent buying diapers for a six-month-old needs the right size and brand, delivered fast. If the product is wrong or late, trust breaks quickly. Baby catalogues also come with sizes and life stages, so stocking a small dark store well is harder than stocking a shelf of chips. That’s our read, not something Kiddo has said, and it’s why dark store economics will matter more here than the funding headline.

The catch: two rivals got there first

Kiddo isn’t opening a new category. It’s joining a race that’s already funded.

Peeko, the Bengaluru baby and kids quick commerce startup founded in 2025, raised $3.2 million from Stellaris Venture Partners in August 2025. This August, it closed a Rs 67.4 crore Series A led by Chiratae Ventures. It promises delivery in under 60 minutes, runs three dark stores in Bengaluru and plans to double that to six by the end of 2026.

OZi, based in Gurugram, raised a $3.3 million seed from Blume Ventures in October 2025 and a $6.2 million Series A led by RTP Global in March 2026, per Indian Startup Times. It lists more than 15,000 products and targets delivery within 60 minutes. Established names like FirstCry and AllThingsBaby sit in the same competitive set.

Run the numbers. Peeko’s Series A alone is more than five times Kiddo’s entire round, and Peeko was founded in the same year. OZi is Gurugram-based, which puts it in the same NCR belt Kiddo is targeting. Kiddo hasn’t disclosed order volumes, customer numbers or a valuation.

What this means for founders and investors

The market pitch is big. One industry estimate puts India’s baby care market at $31 billion in 2022 and $56 billion by 2029, as reported by Business Review Live. No report is named, so read it as a rough guide, not a forecast to build a model on.

Three specialists, Peeko, OZi and Kiddo, have now raised outside money in a little over a year. That suggests investors are willing to back category-first apps next to the big horizontal players like Blinkit and Zepto.

Our read: the playbook here is vertical. Pick a category where a wrong purchase hurts trust and needs repeat as a child grows, then compete on curation instead of discounts. But the proof sits in numbers Kiddo hasn’t shared, including its valuation, order volumes, repeat rates and the names of its angels.

What to watch next

Kiddo says it will add dark stores by year end, so the next few months will show whether the model holds up. Three things to track:

Track whether Kiddo publishes a gross margin figure, since its edge over horizontal apps rests on that claim.
Watch if the roughly 30-minute promise survives as dark stores multiply beyond the first few in Delhi NCR.
Compare Kiddo against Peeko and OZi on assortment, delivery time and funding before assuming curation alone wins.

Are you building in a category where trust matters more than speed? Tell us in the comments, and explore more funding stories on StartupIndiaX.

FAQs

How much did Kiddo raise?

Kiddo raised Rs 12.5 crore in a pre-seed round led by Campus Fund, with participation from strategic angel investors. The company hasn’t disclosed the angels’ names or its valuation.

Who founded Kiddo?

Ankit Kawatra is Kiddo’s founder and CEO. He started Feeding India in 2014 with Srishti Jain, which Zomato acquired in 2019, and completed a Stanford GSB MBA in 2023, according to the company.

What will Kiddo do with the money?

The company plans to spend on customer acquisition, dark store expansion across Delhi NCR, technology and product development, and team building. It says it wants multiple dark stores running by the end of the year.

How is Kiddo different from Blinkit or Zepto?

Kiddo is a baby-only app that recommends products by a child’s stage. Blinkit and Zepto are horizontal apps covering many categories. Kiddo says this focus lets it curate more closely for parents.

Who are Kiddo’s competitors?

Peeko and OZi are the closest specialists, both with Series A funding. Established baby and kids retailers such as FirstCry and AllThingsBaby also compete for the same parents.

When was Kiddo’s funding announced?

The company announced the round on September 17, 2026. It described the raise as pre-seed, with Campus Fund leading and strategic angels participating.

September 21, 2026 0 comments 92 views

StartupIndiaX weekly funding report cover: Indian startups raised $62M, with Flam's $40M Series B about 65% of the week's total

Funding News

Indian Startups Raise $62M This Week (14-20) : Flam’s $40M AI Bet Steals the Show

Flam's $40M Series B did most of the heavy lifting in a week when 17 startups raised $61.8M, down 82% from the one before, per Entrackr.

by Aalam Rohile September 20, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Indian startups raised about $62M, and Flam’s $40M Series B was roughly 65% of it. Part of the round is secondary, per Inc42.
Funding fell 82% on last week, but the prior two weeks were heavy. Judge the drop against the $219.6M eight-week average.
Seed money went to narrow bets in AI chips, aerial vehicles and niche quick commerce. Founders raising now should pitch one specific story.

Indian startups raised about $62M this week, and one round did most of the work. Flam’s $40M Series B made up roughly 65% of the total (our calculation), in a week when funding fell 82% from the one before.

Entrackr counted $61.8M across 17 startups for Sep 14 to 19. Inc42 counted $59.7M, because the two track slightly different deals. We use Entrackr’s figures for totals and name the source wherever the two mix.

Here’s what Flam is building, what the rest of the week looked like, and what it means if you’re raising.

What Flam is actually building

Flam makes AI interactive content. Per Business Standard, its main products are Flicks, interactive videos that can switch a person, product or scene mid-playback, and Visual Agents, human-like characters that hold conversations and take actions. A third format, Airboards, delivers 3D content through a phone camera with no app download. The company says it holds more than 15 patents.

It also says it signed more than 100 enterprise customers in six quarters. Google is the one customer every account we found names. Other named customers differ between outlets, so we’re leaving them out.

The round was led by QED Investors, with RTP Global and Dovetail returning, plus Claypond Capital and angels including Martin Chavez and Olivier Pomel. Business Standard and BW Disrupt list Shah Rukh Khan as an investor, while Inc42 and SiliconANGLE describe his family office. Inc42 flags the round as a mix of primary and secondary money, and TechNode notes no valuation was disclosed.

QED’s Nigel Morris frames the bet as a gap in the market, pointing to “how much of the content ecosystem is still untouched.” That’s an investor describing his own deal, so weigh it accordingly.

SiliconANGLE reports the company says it’s approaching $100M in annual recurring revenue. Other coverage doesn’t mention revenue, so treat that as a company claim, not a verified number.

There’s also a wrinkle in calling this an Indian startup story. BW Disrupt says Flam was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in San Francisco, with teams in India and Japan. Entrackr counts it as Bengaluru-based, which is why it sits in India’s weekly tally. Take it out and the week looks a lot smaller.

The 82% drop, in context

Last week was the outlier. Entrackr counted $356.8M for the week of Sep 7 and $303.7M the week before. Its eight-week average is about $219.6M, so this week landed roughly 72% below the recent norm (our calculation). Inc42’s comparison week was also huge at $321.9M.

Weekly funding fell to $61.8M after two heavy weeks

Indian startup funding by week, in $ million, with Entrackr’s eight-week average.

Source: Entrackr weekly funding reports (Sep 7 to 12 and Sep 14 to 19). Week labels follow Entrackr’s weekly cadence. StartupIndiaX analysis.

Flam’s weight is the other half of the story. Early-stage startups raised $21.8M across 14 deals, per Entrackr. Without Flam, this was small money spread wide.

Flam alone made up about 65% of the week’s funding

Share of the week’s $61.8M total, Sep 14 to 19, 2026.

Source: Entrackr weekly funding report, Sep 14 to 19. The 65% and 35% shares are StartupIndiaX calculations.

Every deal, in one table

Startup	What it does	Amount	Round	Lead investor
Flam	AI interactive content	$40M*	Series B	QED Investors
DheyaTech	Deeptech, aerial vehicles	Rs 43 Cr	Pre-Series A	Avaana Capital
VerifAIX	AI-native semiconductor verification	$5M	Seed	Endiya Partners, Bluehill VC
Firi	Beauty quick commerce	$3M	Seed	360 ONE Asset
UniqYou	Fashion tech	Rs 15.8 Cr	Seed	Arkam Ventures, Antler
Enlight Metals	Metal procurement	$1.5M	Not stated	Exar North Group
Kiddo	Baby-focused quick commerce	$1.3M	Pre-seed	Campus Fund
TRUE ARTIS	Aesthetic surgery	Rs 11.4 Cr	Seed	Zeropearl VC
Factrika	Industrial workforce, manufacturing	$928K	Seed	Info Edge Ventures

*Inc42 says Flam’s round mixes primary and secondary transactions. Amounts follow Entrackr. Inc42 reports DheyaTech at $5.1M and TRUE ARTIS at $1.2M; round labels for Firi, Kiddo and Factrika are Inc42’s.

Smaller rounds: Ecosys raised $521K, and AJVC wrote three cheques of $156K each into MoroMaa, Slayd and Beijan, making it Inc42’s most active investor of the week. Darwinbox, Physioplus and Peep Beauty raised undisclosed amounts.

The week’s biggest disclosed rounds

Rounds with a US dollar amount, in $ million, largest first.

Source: Entrackr and Inc42 weekly reports. DheyaTech ($5.1M) and TRUE ARTIS ($1.2M) are Inc42’s dollar figures; Entrackr reports them as Rs 43 crore and Rs 11.4 crore. UniqYou’s Rs 15.8 crore seed is not shown because neither report gives a dollar figure.

Beyond Flam: chips, drones and narrow quick commerce

The quieter story is hardware. VerifAIX raised $5M in a seed round co-led by Endiya Partners and Bluehill VC for AI-native semiconductor verification. DheyaTech, an aerial vehicles startup, closed a pre-Series A led by Avaana Capital, and AJVC put a small cheque into defence tech startup Beijan.

Quick commerce showed up in narrow lanes. Firi, a Gurugram-based beauty quick commerce startup, raised $3M led by 360 ONE Asset. Kiddo, which focuses on baby products, raised $1.3M from Campus Fund. Both picked one category instead of a full grocery basket.

Fashion got one of the more interesting seeds. UniqYou, a Bengaluru fashion-tech startup founded in 2026 by Sneha Priya Reddy and Nishanth Jois, raised Rs 15.8 Cr led by Arkam Ventures and Antler. StartupTalky reports the round values it at around Rs 64 Cr post-money.

Who wrote the cheques, and where

Seed rounds led with nine deals, followed by four pre-seed and two pre-Series A rounds, per Entrackr. Bengaluru topped the city list with seven deals and Delhi-NCR followed with six. E-commerce led by sector with eight deals.

Seed rounds carried the week

Funding rounds by stage, Sep 14 to 19, 2026.

Source: Entrackr weekly funding report, series-wise deals.

Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR took 13 of 17 deals

Funding deals by city, Sep 14 to 19, 2026.

Source: Entrackr weekly funding report, city-wise deals. Entrackr did not split the remaining four deals across Mumbai, Chennai and Jaipur.

Exits, funds and IPOs

3one4 Capital said Yulu’s $93M Series C gave it a profitable exit through a secondary sale, though the buyer wasn’t disclosed. Unstop acquired PerspectAI, and Lenskart put Rs 8 Cr into Dimension NXG, the parent of AjnaLens, taking its stake above 9%.

Fund managers stayed busy. Activate closed a $105M maiden fund for AI startups, and Asiana Fund and JC Capital launched a Rs 1,000 Cr deeptech fund.

On the public side, NSE raised Rs 6,746 Cr from anchor investors before its IPO opened on Sep 17, and RentoMojo listed the same day at nearly a 19% premium. SEBI cleared IPOs for Kuku and Fibe. Fintech founders also have a date to plan around: NPCI’s 0.4% MDR on select UPI payments above Rs 2,000 starts Oct 15.

What a Flam week tells a founder

A weak week isn’t a verdict on the market. It does show where the money felt comfortable. Seed cheques went to tightly defined ideas: AI-native chips, aerial vehicles, single-category quick commerce, a fashion brand with well-known angels behind it. That’s our read, not a data point.

The figure to watch next is whether growth-stage rounds come back. With NSE, RentoMojo and Kuku giving late-stage investors clearer exits, we’d expect the gap to narrow, but one week can’t prove it.

If you’re raising, sharpen your one-line story before you pitch, and check your numbers first. Our free Founder Toolkit has a valuation calculator, a funding round dilution calculator and an Indian VC and investor database.

Three things to carry out of this week:

Funding fell 82% week on week, but the comparison weeks were unusually heavy.
Flam’s $40M Series B was about 65% of the total, and it mixed primary and secondary money.
Seed money favoured narrow bets in deeptech, AI hardware and niche quick commerce.

Which round surprised you most? Tell us in the comments, and share this with a founder who’s raising. We’ll keep tracking the weekly numbers on StartupIndiaX.

FAQs

How much did Indian startups raise this week?

Entrackr counted $61.8M across 17 startups for Sep 14 to 19, 2026, while Inc42 counted $59.7M. The outlets track slightly different deals, but both report an 82% weekly drop from the previous week.

What is Flam and what does it do?

Flam is an AI interactive content company. Its products include Flicks, interactive videos that change mid-playback, Airboards for 3D content through a phone camera, and Visual Agents, conversational characters. It says it has more than 100 enterprise customers.

Who invested in Flam’s $40M Series B?

QED Investors led the round. Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel and Shah Rukh Khan participated, alongside existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail. Inc42 says the round mixes primary and secondary transactions, and no valuation was disclosed.

Why did funding fall 82%?

The prior two weeks were unusually large, at $303.7M and $356.8M per Entrackr. This week had only one growth-stage deal, Flam’s $40M Series B, so the total looks small by comparison, at roughly 72% below the eight-week average.

Which cities and stages led this week?

Per Entrackr, Bengaluru led with seven deals and Delhi-NCR followed with six. Seed rounds dominated with nine deals, followed by pre-seed with four and pre-Series A with two.

When does the UPI MDR take effect?

NPCI’s 0.4% merchant discount rate on select UPI transactions above Rs 2,000 takes effect on October 15, 2026. It is capped at Rs 300 for payments of Rs 75,000 and above, and merchants bear it.

September 20, 2026 0 comments 103 views

Funding AI & DeepTech News

Flam AI Startup Raises $40 Million Series B Led by QED Investors, Shah Rukh Khan Joins

Bengaluru-and-San Francisco-based Flam pairs the funding with five in-house AI models and 100+ enterprise clients, signalling it wants to be AI infrastructure, not just another content app.

by Aalam Rohile September 20, 2026

3 min read

Summary

Flam raised $40 million in Series B funding led by QED Investors, with Shah Rukh Khan joining as an investor.
The startup runs five proprietary AI models, including a 26-billion-parameter language model called Falcon.
Flam has signed over 100 enterprise clients in six quarters, including Google, and plans to scale sales globally.

Shah Rukh Khan just backed an AI startup, and it’s not the kind of headline that usually needs a second look. Except this one does.

Flam, an AI interactive content company built out of Bengaluru with a San Francisco base, has closed a $40 million Series B round led by QED Investors. The round also pulled in Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel, Venky Harinarayan, and Shah Rukh Khan, alongside existing backers RTP Global and Dovetail, who doubled down. It’s a big jump from Flam’s $14 million Series A, closed in May 2025, and it comes just 16 months later.

The SRK name will get the clicks. What’s actually interesting is what Flam has built underneath it.

What Flam Actually Does

Founded in 2021 by BITS Pilani alumni Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil, and Amit Gaiki, Flam started out building mixed-reality experiences for brands. It’s since pivoted hard into AI-powered interactive content, and it now runs a genuinely deep product stack rather than a single app wrapped around someone else’s model.

Its flagship format, Flicks, is interactive video that swaps a person, product, or entire scene mid-playback using a patented compression algorithm, reportedly delivering the switch in 50 milliseconds. Airboards brings 3D content into a camera interface with touch, voice, and haptic interaction, no app download needed. Forge edits a single specified element in an image without touching the rest. Fable generates native alpha-channel video assets. And Visual Agents are conversational, human-like characters meant to feel closer to a video call than a chatbot window.

Flam AI Startup Person watching an interactive AI video switch scenes on a smartphone screen

Behind all of it sits Flam’s own AI stack: Falcon, a 26-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts language model built for near-instant responses, Finesse for multilingual voice, and Fantom for facial expression and identity-preserving motion transfer. The company says its full pipeline returns a response in under two seconds. Flam also holds over 15 patents, which is not a small claim for a five-year-old company.

Why QED, and Why Now

QED’s Nigel Morris framed the bet as a gap-in-the-market call rather than a hype call. Most AI content companies, he said, are polishing formats that already exist; Flam, he added, is the first team we’ve seen with the infrastructure to go after it.

That’s a reasonable read of Flam’s trajectory so far. According to Agarwal, the company has been growing 70-80% quarter on quarter, starting with an FMCG customer and expanding into entertainment, retail, and enterprise sales more broadly. Flam now counts more than 100 enterprise clients signed over the past six quarters, with Google named as a customer across multiple reports, alongside brands using the platform for marketing, product visualisation, training, customer support, and fan engagement. The company has also struck a partnership with Indonesia’s Emtek Group to push into Southeast Asia.

What’s notably absent from every version of this story, including the official release, is a disclosed valuation. Given the size of the jump from Series A to Series B, that’s a fair thing for readers to keep an eye on as more reporting comes in. Consider this developing until a number surfaces.

The Bigger Signal for Indian AI Startups

Flam’s round lands at a moment when a lot of Indian AI companies are getting called out, fairly or not, for being thin layers on top of someone else’s foundation model. Flam’s pitch is the opposite: it’s spent five years building its own compression tech, its own MoE model, and its own patent portfolio, and only now is it leaning into the AI wave with venture capital behind it.

It’s a pattern Sarvam AI has followed too, building sovereign language models with backing from Lightspeed and Peak XV rather than reselling access to someone else’s API. Bengaluru deep-tech has also shown up this way in space, with Pixxel building its own hyperspectral satellite stack from scratch instead of outsourcing the hard engineering. Flam fits that same lineage: infrastructure first, celebrity investor second.

For founders watching this round, the takeaway isn’t really the Shah Rukh Khan headline. It’s that QED backed technical depth over a flashy demo, at a moment when a lot of “AI startups” in India are still figuring out their moat. That’s worth paying attention to if you’re raising a Series A or B in this space right now.

Flam’s next real test isn’t the funding announcement, it’s whether that 70-80% quarterly growth rate holds as it scales past 100 clients and tries to compete for enterprise budgets against much bigger, much better-funded AI companies globally. The $40 million buys runway, not certainty.

If you’re building in the AI content space, or watching how Indian-origin founders are pairing celebrity capital with real technical infrastructure, this is a round worth bookmarking. Drop your take in the comments, or check out more funding coverage on StartupIndiaX.

Founders mapping out their own raise can run the numbers first: try the Startup Valuation Calculator or browse the Indian VC & Investor Database before pitching investors like the ones backing Flam.

FAQs

What does Flam actually do?

Flam builds AI-powered interactive content, including videos that change mid-playback, 3D content viewable through a phone camera, and conversational AI characters, aimed at enterprise marketing and customer engagement.

Who invested in Flam’s Series B round?

The round was led by QED Investors, with participation from Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel, Venky Harinarayan, Shah Rukh Khan, and existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail.

Why did Shah Rukh Khan invest in Flam?

Neither Khan nor Flam has publicly detailed the reasoning behind the investment; his involvement was confirmed as part of the funding round announcement, without further comment from either party.

Is Flam’s valuation known?

No, Flam has not disclosed its post-Series B valuation. This remains unconfirmed and worth tracking as more coverage emerges.

Where is Flam based?

Flam is headquartered in San Francisco with teams operating in India (Bengaluru) and Japan, and it’s expanding further into Southeast Asia through a partnership with Indonesia’s Emtek Group.

September 20, 2026 0 comments 127 views

Founder Story AI & DeepTech Startup Stories

GalaxEye Founders: How 5 IITians Turned a College Project Into a Satellite Startup With a US Patent

They met on a student Hyperloop team. Now their satellite is in orbit and its core technology is protected by a US patent.

by Aalam Rohile September 19, 2026

3 min read

SUMMARY

Five IIT Madras friends from the Avishkar Hyperloop team launched Mission Drishti in May 2026, an OptoSAR satellite that pairs optical and radar imaging.
A US patent, announced 8 September 2026, protects how GalaxEye syncs its optical and radar sensors. It’s a first for Indian startups, the company says.
Founder lesson: the Hyperloop project ended, but the team stayed together. Shared hardware experience became a company backed with over $20 million, per Business Standard.

Most college projects end with a grade and a folder nobody opens again. This one ended with a satellite in orbit.

Five engineers who met on a student Hyperloop team at IIT Madras now run GalaxEye, a Bengaluru space startup. On 8 September, the company said it had secured a US patent for the core technology behind its OptoSAR imaging system. GalaxEye says it’s the first Indian startup to get a US patent for satellite imaging technology. That claim comes from the company, and YourStory noted it hasn’t been independently verified.

The patent is the latest chapter in a story that runs through a SpaceX contest, a 190 kg satellite and a Falcon 9 launch in May. Here’s how the five founders got there.

A Hyperloop team that didn’t stay a Hyperloop team

Suyash Singh was leading Avishkar Hyperloop, a 40-member IIT Madras team, when the future co-founders came together. In 2019, Forbes India reports, the team became the only Asian squad to reach the finals of SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod competition.

Singh became GalaxEye’s CEO. Denil Chawda is CTO, Kishan Thakkar leads engineering, Pranit Mehta runs sales operations and Rakshit Bhatt leads product, according to Business Standard. All five are IIT Madras alumni.

The Hyperloop work didn’t become the company, but it pointed the way. Forbes India reports the group first explored launching satellites with electrical propulsion. Chawda told the magazine the idea would need a 40-kilometre launch tube at a steep angle, which wasn’t feasible.

So they changed the problem. The idea for GalaxEye, per Forbes India, grew out of a consulting project in the US where Singh had to assess wildfire damage using satellite data. The company was formally incorporated in May 2021, after a year in stealth mode.

The rocket idea died. The team didn’t.

Why one satellite with two sensors is the whole point

Picture a normal camera in space. It produces images anyone can read, but clouds and darkness block it. Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, sees through both, but its images are harder to interpret.

Most systems treat the two as separate jobs and stitch the data together later. OfficeChai points out that this workaround can introduce gaps, mismatches and delay. GalaxEye’s OptoSAR design puts both sensors on one platform and syncs them, so they capture the same place at the same time.

The company is aiming the data at defence surveillance, maritime monitoring, agriculture and disaster response. It’s also playing against giants. Business Standard names Iceye, valued at about $2.8 billion, and Maxar among its rivals.

Five years of hardware, and the money that kept it moving

Building a satellite is slow, and the funding trail shows it.

In December 2022, GalaxEye raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Speciale Invest, with angels including Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath and EaseMyTrip’s Prashant Pitti, as SiliconIndia reported. In November 2024 it closed a $10 million Series A led by MountTech Growth Fund – Kavachh, with Mela Ventures, Speciale Invest, ideaForge, Samarthya Investment Advisors and Infosys also in the round, per Indian Startup News.

Milestones stacked up around those rounds. GalaxEye won the government’s iDEX-DIO challenge for satellite edge computing in 2024, ThePrint reports. In December 2024, its GLX-SQ payload flew on ISRO’s POEM-4 platform to test the sensor-fusion system in orbit, according to eoPortal.

By late May 2026, Business Standard put total investment at over $20 million and the team at about 140 people. Funding trackers don’t agree on totals, so treat that figure as a reported number, not an audited one.

Launch day: 3 May 2026

On 3 May 2026, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with Mission Drishti on board. “Drishti” means vision or sight, and the name fits.

According to GalaxEye’s mission page, the satellite weighs about 190 kg and sits at roughly 500 km altitude. It revisits a location every four days and images at 1.2 to 3.6 metre resolution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the team, calling the launch proof of young Indians’ passion for innovation, News On Air reported.

The SpaceX link that began with a student contest has stuck around. Singh told Business Standard that booking a launch is now “almost like booking a bus ticket through an app.”

As of Business Standard’s report in late May, Drishti was completing its commissioning phase, with first imagery for customers expected soon.

What the US patent protects, and what it doesn’t

GalaxEye says the patent covers the architecture used to synchronise optical and microwave sensors so they capture spatially and temporally matched data. The same core technology is already patented in India.

Here’s the part most headlines skip. ThePrint explains that a US patent lets the owner stop others from making, using, selling or importing the invention in the US for 20 years. It doesn’t hand GalaxEye ownership of sensor fusion as an idea. Protection is tied to the particular way the company built its OptoSAR system.

Still, it matters. GalaxEye says it has a growing pipeline of domestic and international customers and plans a 30-satellite constellation over the next five years, per IBTimes India. Earlier coverage had cited 10 satellites by 2030, so the ambition has grown. In August, it also acquired Bengaluru-based spacecraft firm StarOps.

The IP work started early. In 2022, Chawda told IANS the team was already filing patents, as an IIT Madras news archive records. By October 2025, Forbes India counted six patents filed.

What other founders can take from this

Indian deeptech keeps producing teams that formed before the company did. Pixxel’s founders were classmates at BITS Pilani. Skyroot’s story starts with an ISRO engineer.

GalaxEye adds a useful twist. Its founders proved they could build hardware together before they had a company, an investor or a product. Hardware then ate years, and the patents took years too.

Our take: a patent is protection, not revenue. The real test now is whether Drishti’s data turns into paying contracts, and whether GalaxEye can fund a constellation against far bigger rivals. Business Standard says the company plans to raise more capital alongside early revenue and government-backed support.

India’s space-tech wave is also getting wider, from imaging to direct-to-phone connectivity.

If you’re building something yourself, here’s what this story leaves you with:

Team first: GalaxEye’s founders proved they could build hardware together on a student team before incorporating a company.
Protect the core early: the team said it was filing patents in 2022, and this US grant was announced in 2026.
Pick a problem rivals can’t dodge: clouds and darkness limit optical satellites, and GalaxEye built its whole company around that gap.

Which student project do you think could become the next GalaxEye? Tell us in the comments, share this with an engineering friend, and read more founder stories on StartupIndiaX.

FAQs

Who founded GalaxEye?

GalaxEye was founded in 2021 by five IIT Madras alumni: Suyash Singh (CEO), Denil Chawda (CTO), Kishan Thakkar (VP Engineering), Pranit Mehta (VP Sales Operations) and Rakshit Bhatt (VP Product). They first worked together on Team Avishkar Hyperloop.

What is OptoSAR?

OptoSAR combines optical imaging and synthetic aperture radar on one satellite. Optical shows clear, easy-to-read images but struggles with cloud and darkness, while radar sees through both but is harder to interpret. Fusing them aims to give consistent all-weather imagery.

What does GalaxEye’s US patent cover?

When did Mission Drishti launch?

Mission Drishti launched on 3 May 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The roughly 190 kg satellite is described by GalaxEye as India’s largest privately built Earth observation satellite.

How much has GalaxEye raised?

GalaxEye raised a $3.5 million seed round in December 2022 and a $10 million Series A in November 2024. Business Standard reported in May 2026 that total investment had crossed $20 million, though trackers report different totals.

What is GalaxEye planning next?

GalaxEye said in September it plans a 30-satellite constellation over the next five years. Earlier coverage cited 10 satellites by 2030, so the stated target has grown. The company also acquired Bengaluru-based StarOps in August to strengthen spacecraft engineering.

September 19, 2026 0 comments 77 views

MiCoB 3D construction printing technology deployed at an Indian infrastructure site

Funding Technology

This Gujarat Startup MiCoB Lands Rs 30 Crore From Flipkart’s CEO on Vande Bharatam

Construction-tech startup MiCoB walked away with the biggest single commitment of the season, and a nod from Karan Adani for its infrastructure ambitions

by Aalam Rohile September 16, 2026

3 min read

Summary

MiCoB secured a Rs 30 crore commitment from Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and RENÉE Cosmetics co-founder Ashutosh Valani on Vande Bharatam.
Karan Adani separately offered procurement support, opening a path for MiCoB’s tech across Adani Group infrastructure projects.
The deal is being called the largest single commitment recorded on the show this season.

Most founders spend months chasing a term sheet. Ankita Sinha, Shashank Shekhar and Rishabh Mathur got theirs on national television, in front of a panel that included the son of one of India’s richest men.

Their company, MiCoB, builds 3D construction printing technology. On 14 September, the Gujarat-based startup walked onto the set of Episode 7 of Vande Bharatam and walked off with a Rs 30 crore commitment, jointly offered by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart, and Ashutosh Valani, co-founder of RENÉE Cosmetics.

Vande Bharatam is Gautam Adani’s answer to the startup pitch show format, a nationwide hunt for grassroots innovators that he launched on his 64th birthday this June. Actor and TV host Rajeev Khandelwal fronts the show. The panel that day also included Karan Adani, Managing Director of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd, and Rajeev Kalambi, co-founder and general partner at Cactus Partners.

What made MiCoB’s pitch land wasn’t just the printer. It was where the printer was already working.

The startup’s tech is currently deployed across defence, infrastructure and civil construction projects, building things like bunkers, retaining structures and modular buildings. That’s not a lab demo. That’s product already in the field, doing government-grade work.

Krishnamurthy pointed to exactly that. He said what convinced him wasn’t the technology on its own, but seeing MiCoB’s platform already deployed and working across defence, infrastructure and industrial sites.

Karan Adani went further. Instead of just writing a cheque, he offered something arguably more valuable for an infrastructure-tech startup: procurement support for MiCoB’s ongoing and future construction projects. That opens a real path for MiCoB’s technology to be used across Adani Group’s own infrastructure work, which is not a small pipeline by any Indian standard.

He called MiCoB proof of exactly what Vande Bharatam is meant to surface, deep-tech that’s already solving real infrastructure problems on the ground.

Here’s the number that matters most for anyone tracking this show: Rs 30 crore is being described as the largest single commitment recorded on Vande Bharatam so far this season, and reportedly the largest deal of its kind seen on a comparable Indian platform.

That’s a meaningful data point for India’s construction-tech space, which has historically struggled to get the kind of headline funding that fintech or D2C startups pull in routinely. Investors tend to see construction as slow, capital-heavy and hard to scale. A Rs 30 crore vote of confidence, backed by an offer of real project access, pushes back on that assumption.

It also says something about where corporate-backed platforms like Vande Bharatam are headed. This isn’t just a mentorship and visibility exercise anymore. When a panelist can offer actual construction contracts alongside capital, the line between “funding show” and “business development pipeline” starts to blur, in the founder’s favor.

For MiCoB specifically, the founders now have capital, a validated use case across defence and infrastructure, and a potential customer in one of India’s largest industrial conglomerates. Few early-stage founders get all three from a single pitch.

The Vande Bharatam season itself wraps up on 17 September with a grand finale, where the eventual winners will take home a Rs 2 crore cash prize backed by the Adani Group. Whether MiCoB features in that finale or not, its Episode 7 moment has already set the bar for what a strong pitch on this platform looks like.

Also Read : Aditya Birla Group Launches Ultravolt: Everything to Know About Its ₹1,800 Crore Wires Bet

For founders watching this space, the lesson isn’t really about the TV format. It’s about what got MiCoB there in the first place: real deployment, real use cases, and proof that the tech works outside a controlled environment. That’s what turned a pitch into a Rs 30 crore commitment and an open door to one of India’s biggest infrastructure players.

MiCoB’s Rs 30 crore moment is a reminder that construction-tech in India is starting to get the attention it has long deserved, especially when the product is already proving itself on real sites. It’s also a sign that platforms like Vande Bharatam are becoming more than visibility exercises, they’re starting to function as genuine deal-flow. Worth watching what MiCoB builds next, and who else this show pulls into the spotlight before the season closes. Got thoughts on deep-tech getting this kind of corporate backing? Drop them in the comments, and keep an eye on StartupIndiaX for how this space develops.

FAQs

What is MiCoB and what does it do?

MiCoB is a Gujarat-based construction-technology startup that builds 3D construction printing solutions, already deployed across defence, infrastructure and civil construction projects in India.

How much funding did MiCoB raise on Vande Bharatam?

MiCoB secured a Rs 30 crore commitment, jointly offered by Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and RENÉE Cosmetics co-founder Ashutosh Valani, on Episode 7 of the show.

Who are MiCoB’s founders?

MiCoB was founded by Ankita Sinha, Shashank Shekhar and Rishabh Mathur.

What is Vande Bharatam?

Vande Bharatam is a nationwide initiative launched by Gautam Adani in June 2026 to discover and support grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs across India, hosted by actor Rajeev Khandelwal.

Did Karan Adani invest in MiCoB directly?

Did Karan Adani invest in MiCoB directly?
Karan Adani did not join the Rs 30 crore commitment himself. He separately offered procurement support for MiCoB’s construction projects, opening potential deployment across Adani Group infrastructure.

When does the Vande Bharatam season end?

The season concludes on 17 September with a grand finale, where winners receive a Rs 2 crore cash prize backed by the Adani Group.

September 16, 2026 0 comments 82 views

Pixxel founder Awais Ahmed, whose spacetech startup led Indian startup funding this week with a $100 million round

News AI & DeepTech Funding

Indian Startup Funding This Week (Sep 7-12): Pixxel, Nua, Popo Global Lead $356.8M Raise

A record spacetech round, a bootstrapped restaurant chain's big check, and Swiggy handing off a chunk of its business to Udaan, all inside one $356.8 million week

by Aalam Rohile September 13, 2026

3 min read

Summary

23 Indian startups raised $356.8 million this week (Sep 7-12), up 17% from last week’s $303.7 million, per Entrackr.
Pixxel raised India’s largest-ever spacetech round at $100 million, while Nua and Popo Global pulled in $50 million and $56 million.
Swiggy sold its Lynk Logistics unit to Udaan for Rs 500 crore, and Whatfix named a new CEO after co-founder Khadim Batti’s death.

Indian startup funding this week picked up pace again. Twenty-three startups raised a combined $356.8 million, up 17% from the $303.7 million recorded the week before, according to Entrackr’s weekly tracker. That’s comfortably above the eight-week average of roughly $232 million, so the momentum from last week didn’t just hold, it built.

Week-on-Week Funding Trend

India startup funding, USD Mn (Sep 7–12, 2026)

Six growth-stage deals brought in $182 million, while 15 early-stage rounds added another $174.8 million, and two startups kept their numbers under wraps. One thing worth flagging upfront: Entrackr’s own summary line cites 17 early-stage deals for the week, but its detailed breakdown lists 15. The math on the total (6 growth + 15 early + 2 undisclosed = 23) lines up with the reported headline count, so we’re treating 15 as the more reliable figure here.

Pixxel’s Record Round Headlines A Strong Week For Growth-Stage Bets

Bengaluru-based spacetech company Pixxel raised $100 million in a Series C round co-led by Singapore’s Temasek and UK-based Seraphim Space, with Radical Ventures, growX Ventures, 360 ONE Asset and IMM Investment also participating. It’s the largest single funding round ever raised by an Indian spacetech company, and it takes Pixxel’s total funding to $195 million. The money is earmarked for expanding its Honeybee satellite constellation and building out Aurora, its Earth-intelligence software platform.

Top Funding Deals

Sep 7–12, 2026 (USD Mn)

Restaurant chain Popo Global wasn’t far behind, pulling in $56 million (about Rs 532 crore) from Artal Asia, a rare growth-stage check for a bootstrapped F&B player. Women’s wellness brand Nua raised $50 million in a Series C round, with Peak XV Partners as the anchor investor alongside Filter Capital, Mirabilis Investment Trust and Footpath Ventures, per YourStory’s reporting on the deal.

Rounding out the growth-stage list, workforce accommodation startup HerSpace Manufacturing secured $40 million from Gray Matters Capital, quick food delivery platform Swish raised $24 million led by Bertelsmann India Investments, fleet management platform Carrum Mobility closed a $10 million Series B led by Uber, and pet food brand Lickicious picked up Rs 19 crore led by Prath Ventures.

Early-Stage Money Chased Quantum, Cardless Payments And AI

Cybersecurity and quantum firm QNu Labs raised Rs 200 crore in a Series A1 round co-led by the National Quantum Mission and Speciale Invest, a rare early-stage check with government-backed capital in the mix. Cardless payments platform Piston raised $15 million led by FPV Ventures, and AI-powered patient safety startup Graph AI secured $13.3 million led by Insight Partners.

Fashion brand Theater raised Rs 75 crore at a Rs 410 crore post-money valuation, and Cooling-as-a-Service platform Circolife closed $4.5 million. Voice AI company Navana.ai, B2B pharma distribution platform Fundly.ai and water-infrastructure startup DigitalPaani also raised capital this week, and YoLearn.ai, SpeakX, Neurotech and deeptech firm BQP raised undisclosed amounts.

Sector-Wise Deal Activity

Number of deals this week (Sep 7–12)

AI led the sector count with five deals this week, ahead of foodtech, healthtech, fintech, F&B and deeptech with two apiece, while spacetech, proptech, mobility and e-commerce also picked up funding. That AI number is worth sitting with. It’s not a single mega-round distorting the picture, it’s five separate checks across different stages, which suggests investors are still writing early bets even as the big spacetech and D2C rounds grab the headlines.

City-Wise Deal Activity

Number of deals this week (Sep 7–12)

Bengaluru stayed well out in front with 14 deals, followed by Delhi-NCR with four. Mumbai, Thane and Kerala also recorded activity. On the series side, Series A and seed rounds tied for the most deals at seven each, followed by Series B, pre-seed and undisclosed rounds with two each, and one deal apiece for Series C and pre-Series A.

Swiggy Hands Lynk Logistics To Udaan, And Whatfix Names A New CEO

The week’s biggest non-funding story: Swiggy agreed to sell its retail distribution business Lynk Logistics to Udaan for Rs 500 crore. It’s the second time in recent memory that Udaan has been central to a notable deal on this beat, and it points to consolidation picking up in B2B distribution as bigger platforms decide which businesses are core and which aren’t. Separately, Kochi-based Cyrix Healthcare acquired the MedTech Solutions business of Blue Star Engineering & Electronics.

On leadership, enterprise software startup Whatfix appointed co-founder Vara Kumar as CEO, effective immediately, following the death of co-founder Khadim Batti on September 1. It’s a hard transition under difficult circumstances, and one the startup ecosystem will likely be watching closely. Elsewhere, NIIF named Gauravjit Singh as managing partner and global head of capital formation, Bhartiya Converge appointed Eric Pagdiwalla as COO, and Honasa Consumer elevated Nishchay Bahl to chief business officer, offline. At Snap, Ajit Mohan stepped down as chief business officer and will return to Singapore, with EMEA president Ronan Harris taking over the role.

On the fund side, healthcare-focused venture firm W Health Ventures closed its second fund at Rs 700 crore, oversubscribing its initial Rs 630 crore target, with plans to build 8-10 healthcare companies from the pre-idea stage over the next four years.

What This Means For Founders

If you’re building in spacetech or deeptech, Pixxel’s round shows how large a growth-stage check can get in India right now, and that investors are comfortable backing longer product cycles when the platform story is credible. If you’re in AI, five separate deals this week say early-stage capital hasn’t dried up, it’s just spread across different use cases rather than piling into one category.

The Swiggy-Udaan deal is worth a second look if you run a logistics or distribution business. Larger platforms are actively deciding what stays in-house, and that usually creates openings for smaller, focused players.

If you’re prepping your own raise, StartupIndiaX’s Indian VC & Investor Database is worth a look for shortlisting active funds at your stage, and the Funding Round Dilution Calculator can help you model out a term sheet before you sign one.

Which deal from this week caught your attention, Pixxel’s record round or the Swiggy-Udaan handoff? Let us know in the comments, and check back next week for the next roundup.

FAQs

How much did Indian startups raise this week (Sep 7-12, 2026)?

Indian startups raised $356.8 million across 23 deals this week, according to Entrackr, up 17% from the previous week’s $303.7 million.

Which startup raised the biggest round this week?

Spacetech company Pixxel raised $100 million in a Series C round co-led by Temasek and Seraphim Space, the largest single round ever raised by an Indian spacetech company.

Why did Swiggy sell Lynk Logistics to Udaan?

Swiggy agreed to sell its retail distribution business to Udaan for Rs 500 crore. Neither company has disclosed a specific reason beyond the transaction terms, so we aren’t speculating further.

Who is Whatfix’s new CEO?

Co-founder Vara Kumar was named CEO of Whatfix, effective immediately, following the death of co-founder and former CEO Khadim Batti on September 1, 2026.

Which sector saw the most funding activity this week?

AI led with five separate deals, followed by foodtech, healthtech, fintech, F&B and deeptech with two deals each.

Which city led startup funding activity this week?

Bengaluru led with 14 deals, followed by Delhi-NCR with four. Mumbai, Thane and Kerala also recorded funding activity.

September 13, 2026 0 comments 129 views

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