India’s coffee culture is thriving. With a $500 Mn industry brewing fast, it’s no surprise that coffee lovers are seeking better brews. While giants like Nestlé, HUL, and Tata dominate the instant coffee market, true connoisseurs often struggle to find their preferred cup. 

The gap became even more evident during the Covid-19 lockdowns when limited choices and poor-quality brews left many craving better options. To bridge this gap, Abhinav Mathur and a group of coffee enthusiasts launched Something’s Brewing in 2020, a D2C marketplace dedicated to all things coffee. 

As new-age D2C brands like SLAY Coffee, Third Wave Coffee, First Coffee, Rage Coffee, and Blue Tokai gain traction, India is shifting towards premium, artisanal, and home-brewed coffee experiences. Something’s Brewing makes home brewing easier with premium coffee gear and high-quality brews.

Crafting Fresh Brews 

Unlike instant coffee brands, Something’s Brewing chose to educate the consumer through YouTube videos, blogs, and product guides while fostering community engagement through events and workshops. As home brewing remains a new concept in India, it aims to bridge the knowledge gap with a curated marketplace featuring top coffee brands and equipment.

The startup is a vertical marketplace, offering a wide variety of brews, dry coffee, coffee equipment, including fully automatic and semi-automatic machines, manual brewers, grinders, and related gear for brewing at home. Its flagship product Budan One Touch Coffee Machine can brew using both coffee pods and ground coffee, creating everything from a rich espresso to a frothy cappuccino.

Double Shot On Retail

Something’s Brewing saw its revenue reach INR 7.9 Cr in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) from INR 6.7 Cr a year back, scaling over 60%. It also expanded its retail presence by launching its second store in Surat, which reached operational break-even within two months. One of the key milestones for the brand in community engagement was hosting the Mumbai Coffee Festival in collaboration with Reliance Jio World, which attracted nearly 25,000 enthusiasts. The brand has so far served 12,000+ users and has sold more than 25,000 products.

A Peek Into The Next Pour 

The D2C brand aims to double its growth from the previous year and looks to hit INR 25 Cr in revenue by FY25.

Something’s Brewing plans 20 experience centres across top metro cities, offering a premium coffee brewing experience. A range of IoT-enabled Budan Brewers, operated through an app with features like recipe storage and sharing, is also on the cards. 

For its long-term vision, the brand aims to achieve INR 100 Cr in revenue and build a 100K strong community over the next 4-5 years.

[Authored By Pooja Yadav]

The post How Something’s Brewing Is Disrupting India’s $500 Mn Coffee Industry With Specialty Brews appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Quick commerce is a rapidly growing sector within the consumer market. Initially focussed on delivering daily essentials to doorsteps, it is now evolving to influence consumer behaviour by offering a wide range of products, beyond just groceries, with extremely short delivery times.

This shift has not only transformed the nature of quick commerce but has also pushed established players like Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and Zomato’s Blinkit to broaden their offerings. These companies are now venturing into electronics, clothing, and footwear, while also launching platforms for quick food delivery.

Notably, the three giants together reported over $1 Bn in revenue in FY24 while a report estimates that the quick commerce industry in India has seen a sales surge of 280% in the last two years.

Such has been its sudden rise that many project quick commerce platforms to eventually eat into the market share of traditional ecommerce platforms. 

Fearful of missing this opportunity, Flipkart has already entered the burgeoning space with “Minutes” and Amazon has begun piloting its quick commerce offerings under a new label called Amazon Now. 

In addition to established ecommerce brands, a wave of new startups and conglomerates has entered the market, eager to replicate this success and claim their share of the quick commerce space. 

While Nykaa and Myntra have been experimenting with this for apparel deliveries, Swish wants to utilise the model to bring piping hot quick-to-prepare dishes to users within “10 minutes”. And this is just the tip of the iceberg as many new players in the ecosystem are now looking to emulate the growth trajectory of the “Trinity”.

As a new wave of quick commerce players and adopters continue to spawn, we thought of curating a list of companies planning to ace the “10-minute” delivery game in the country. Without further ado, here’s a look at the Indian quick commerce landscape outside of the Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto universe. 

Editor’s Note: This is neither an exhaustive list nor a ranking of any kind. We have listed the startups alphabetically.

Meet India’s New Quick Commerce Brigade 

1. Amazon Now

In February 2025, Amazon India rolled out its 10-minute delivery service, Amazon Now, in some select pincodes of Bengaluru, with plans to scale the offering by April 2025, after it gains a portion of market share via delivering grocery and daily essentials.

Relatively speaking, the ecommerce giant has been slow to jump on the quick commerce bandwagon.While the company has been experimenting with its 10-minute deliveries since December, it is yet to go for an all India expansion.

Amazon’s entry into this sector came much later after Flipkart became comfortable with its own offering called Minutes last year. Both the ecommerce giants are in the chase of market leaders Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, in the 10-minute delivery arena.

Meanwhile, the company has been silently expanding its groceries delivery business, perhaps the hottest products available on quick commerce platforms. Amazon Fresh is now present in 170 Indian cities, including Ambala, Aurangabad, Hoshiarpur, Dharwad, and Una. 

2. BigBasket BBnow

Tata’s BigBasket is arguably one of the biggest competitors to the three incumbents in the Indian quick commerce arena. Having already experimented with 30-minute deliveries for some products for the past few years, BigBasket, as a natural extension, became a full-scale quick commerce platform earlier in 2021. 

BigBasket’s quick commerce strategy will see the deployment of 500-600 dark stores nationwide, which will work alongside its 56-60 large warehouses. It plans to link clusters of dark stores with these warehouses to streamline the delivery of both popular grocery items and non-grocery products. 

As per reports, BigBasket has set its eyes on generating $1 Bn out of its projected $1.5 Bn sales for the ongoing financial year 2024-25 (FY25) through the quick commerce vertical. 

3. Blinkit Bistro

As the trend of 10-minute food delivery, or quick bites, picks pace in India, Zomato-owned Blinkit entered the space with a separate app, Bistro.The Albinder Dhindsa-led company spun off a new app, called Bistro, in December 2024 in its pilot phase and catering to select pincodes in Gurugram, Blinkit’s Bistro delivers meals, snacks, and beverages like tea and coffee in up to 15 minutes.

Notably, Bistro’s launch came just days after Zepto also launched a separate Zepto Cafe app to deliver beverages and snacks within 10 minutes. While Zepto’s Cafe has expanded into multiple parts of the country, Bistro still seemingly operates in Gurugram. Meanwhile, Blinkit parent Zomato launched a separate 10-minute food delivery platform, Zomato Quick, in January.

4. Blitz

Founded in 2020 by Gaurav Piyush, Mayank Varshney and Yash Sharma, Blitz is a quick commerce focussed logistics startup that provides ecommerce sellers across India integrated fulfillment centers and shipping and delivery partners to achieve quick deliveries. 

Its offerings stack includes 1 hour deliveries made in a five kilometer radius, same day deliveries in 500 pin codes and next-day deliveries in 800 pin codes across the country. 

While the startup’s services are currently active in 10 cities in India, including  Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, it is planning to expand its dark store network to the top 20 Indian cities.

The startup has raised around $9 Mn since its inception from investors such as IvyCap Ventures, IndiaQuotient and Alteria capital and angel investors including Ramesh Bafna of Zepto, Bestseller CEO Vinit Gautam, Amitabh Suri CEO Arvind fashion.

5. Blip

For people looking to get quick wardrobe fixes, the days of waiting for days to get their clothes delivered or going to the market physically seem to be coming to an end. This is because startups like Blip are now introducing fashion to quick commerce. 

Born out of serial entrepreneurs Ansh Agarwal and Sarvesh Kedia to make fashion quick commerce a reality, Blip has been delivering clothes in 30 minutes in Mumbai. It was founded in 2024 after a brief pilot phase.

Since then, Blip has onboarded brands like United Colors of Benetton (UCB), Tommy Hilfiger, Celio, Park Avenue, Pepe Jeans, AND, Global Desi, among others. Moving forward, the Bengaluru-based startup plans to open offline showrooms for mid to large-scale apparel D2C brands, positioning itself as the “Shopify for offline retail”.

6. FirstClub

Founded by former Cleartrip’s chief executive Ayyappan R, FirstClub aims to create a truly omnichannel retail brand, combining the speed of quick commerce with an immersive experience of offline stores.

While the platform is yet to be launched, it will begin its quick commerce operations by initially delivering daily essentials like fruits, vegetables, groceries, dairy, and health products in a timeline of 20 to 30 minutes. Gradually, it will expand into categories like beauty, fashion, home, and more.

The startup secured $8 Mn as a part of its seed funding round co-led by Accel and RTP Global, in December 2024.

7. Flipkart Minutes

In what has been touted as Flipkart’s biggest bet in years, the ecommerce major entered the quick commerce territory with Minutes in 2024. After piloting the service in parts of Bengaluru, in August 2024. Subsequently, the company expanded its quick commerce offerings to Delhi NCR.

As of now, Flipkart Minutes delivers daily essentials like groceries, fruits, vegetables to mobiles and electronics to its users in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.

While the adoption of the vertical by the ecommerce major has been gradual, it is planning to double down on 10-minute deliveries in the near future. As per reports, Flipkart is working on expanding its quick commerce segment by launching 500-550 dark stores before its Big Billion Days sale in 2025.

Further, as it gains more market share, Minutes is also planning to start delivery of medicines within 10 minutes by partnering with local pharmacists.

8. JioMart

Reliance Retail-owned JioMart has also made a comeback in the quick commerce arena by piloting instant delivery of groceries and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in some parts of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

The service went live on the JioMart app under the ‘hyperlocal delivery’ section and is said to deliver orders within an hour in the initial stages. 

The retailer, however, plans to reduce the delivery time between 30 and 45 minutes during the later stages, while also expanding its product categories to include apparel and electronic items.

JioMart will bank on Reliance Retail’s network of over 18,000 stores across the country to fulfil its orders.

Reliance Retail previously operated its quick commerce venture under a pilot called JioMart Express, which was shut down in early 2023.

9. magicNOW 

Having experimented with state-backed ONDC for some time now, hyperlocal delivery platform Magicpin, too, took the quick commerce plunge in December last year with the launch of magicNOW, a 15-minute food delivery service.

Taking on the might of Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto, Magicpin appears to have been experimenting with quick delivery for some time now. Before the full rollout in December, the Delhi NCR-based startup claims to have completed 75,000 deliveries during its pilot in select localities of Delhi NCR and Bengaluru. 

Operating within a 1.5km to 2 km delivery radius, magicNOW directly partners with restaurants to offer freshly cooked food to its customers. It has partnered with over 2,000 QSR brands including Chaayos, Faasos, Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and more than 1,000 local restaurants.

The new service will be powered by Magicpin’s Velocity service, which aggregates third-party logistics providers, including Shadowfax, Dunzo, Rapido, Porter, Ola, and Zypp. 

It plans to expand to Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune in the near future. 

10. M-Now

2024 was all about Flipkart-owned Myntra’s experiments with quick delivery. It became one of the first fashion and lifestyle ecommerce platforms in India to jump onto the quick commerce bandwagon last year. 

Even though Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy have added fashion SKUs in the past few years, Myntra is the first dedicated player in this space. In September, the ecommerce major piloted a four-hour delivery service in some parts of Bengaluru and Delhi.

Following the experiment, the company, in November 2024, began rolling out its “M-Now” offering, which offers a 30-minute to 2-hour delivery feature in some parts of Bengaluru. 

Notably, an internal assessment conducted by the company also showed a significant increase in consumers’ propensity to complete purchases when offered shorter delivery times. Earlier, Myntra’s ‘M-Express’ service delivered orders in a 24 to 48-hour window to select cities.

11. Nykaa

Listed beauty marketplace Nykaa, too, has been experimenting with a quick commerce pilot in the financial capital of the country. 

In October 2024, Nykaa launched a 10-minute delivery pilot in select parts of Mumbai, covering 5% of its SKU base. While there is no explicit comment by the BPC major on its quick commerce foray, it has been working on improving its delivery timelines over the past few quarters. 

However, brokerages expect Nykaa to witness higher fulfilment costs due to its ambition of fast deliveries, adversely impacting its EBITDA margin. 

12. Ola Food Delivery

To cash in on the 10-minute food delivery segment, Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola Consumer began piloting quick food deliveries in some parts of Bengaluru in December last year. 

The offering, which was rolled out on the native Ola Cabs app, claims to deliver food items from various restaurants within 10 minutes. This marks yet another attempt from the company to disrupt the food delivery segment via Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC).

Previously, the company ventured into quick commerce under the label Ola Dash in 2015. However, Ola pulled the shutters down on Dash in mid-2022 to channel its focus on its electric vehicles and mobility businesses.

13. Ola Grocery Delivery

A week after Ola Consumer began piloting quick food deliveries in December 2024, the Bhavish Aggarwal-led company also rolled out a 10-minute grocery delivery service in select pin codes in Bengaluru.

The launch officially marked Ola Consumer’s foray into the quick commerce segment even though the mobility major has been experimenting with grocery deliveries on ONDC for some time now. 

Via this new offering, Ola will deliver grocery and kitchen staples such as fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy items, along with home care and personal care products, to customers in select parts of Bengaluru.

14. Slikk

Slikk is one of the newest entrants in the quick commerce space, having been founded in August 2024 by Akshay Gulati, Om Swami and Bipin Singh. Earlier this year, it raised INR 2.5 Cr in a pre-seed round led by Better Capital, with additional participation from Untitled Ventures.

The fashion ecommerce platform claims to deliver branded apparel items within 60 minutes in select locations of Bengaluru and claims to be catering to about 100 users per day. 

The startup claims to have implemented algorithms and machine learning to gauge customer preferences and shopping behaviours to personalise its app. 

In March, Slikk raised $3.2 Mn in a seed funding round led by Lightspeed to expand its operations, making 80% of Bengaluru’s pincodes serviceable through multiple dark stores.

15. Snabbit

Founded by Zepto’s former chief of staff Agarwal in 2024, Snabbit is a quick service platform that offers domestic services such as general cleaning, laundry and similar others on demand within 10 minutes.

Agarwal said that users can book slots from three days in advance to claim a service to a last moment reservation that would be available at a notice of 10 minutes. The application has more than 10K downloads on Google Play Store, as of March 2025.

The Mumbai-based platform has secured $6.5 Mn since its inception. It is backed by Elevation Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, along with a host of angel investors, including Meesho cofounders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal;  Unacademy cofounder Gaurav Munjal and Spinny’s founder Niraj Singh.

16. Swiggy SNACC

Amid the increasing cut-throat in the quick commerce arena, Swiggy launched a new 15-minute food delivery app on January 8. Called SNACC, the app currently delivers to only a select few places in Bengaluru.

The platform offers quick delivery of various food options, including “homestyle meals”, meal bowls, beverages and quick bites to its users.

It is pertinent to note that in September 2024, the foodtech major experimented with the ‘Cafe’ option to deliver snacks and beverages in 15 minutes. However, instead of launching a separate application, this option was integrated into Swiggy’s food delivery app.

Furthermore, Swiggy has also launched a new service, Swiggy Bolt, to deliver quick-to-prepare dishes in 10 minutes from popular restaurants and QSR chains within a two-kilometre radius of consumers.

17. Swish

Founded in August 2024 by Aniket Shah, Ujjwal Sukheja and Saran S, Swish offers 10-minute food delivery services in select parts of Bengaluru. The startup delivers a range of fast food offerings in just 10 to 15 minutes via its application. 

Swish operates as a vertically integrated startup that controls all aspects of operations in-house, including food preparation, delivery and supply chain. While it currently operates just one cloud kitchen, it caters to nearly 150-200 orders daily, with an average order value in the range of INR 250 to INR 300. 

In the near future, it plans to set up 45 cloud kitchens to cater to the “most high-demand areas of Bengaluru”, and expand outside the startup hub in due course of time.

18. WAAYU

Founded in 2022 by childhood friends Mandar Lande and Anirudha Kotgire, WAAYU is a quick food delivery platform, which claims to serve fast and nutritious food to customers. 

Taking a different route than established giants in the space, WAAYU is looking to make a dent in the quick food delivery space with its zero-commission fee model. Unlike its rivals, WAAYU operates on a subscription model, which is designed to be affordable and easily accessible for restaurants. 

It charges a one-time setup fee of INR 4,650 and a monthly subscription fee of INR 1,200 from individual restaurants, freeing them from giving commissions on every order. For deliveries, it partners with third-party logistics platforms for last-mile operations. 

On the B2C side, it claims to have achieved 25,000+ app downloads and was able to acquire 1-1.5 Lakh users on its app till September 2024. Afterwards, it joined the ONDC as a seller app and, as a result, the number of users on its platform grew 10 Lakh. 

On the financial front, the startup reported a revenue of INR 75 Lakh+ in FY24 and is looking to generate around INR 2 Cr in FY25, as per the cofounder.

19. Zing

Quick commerce has revolutionised how Indians shop online. With 10-minute deliveries becoming a norm, Indian foodtech startups are leaving no stone unturned to capitalise on customers’ growing penchant for fast deliveries. 

While there is no dearth of deep-pocketed rivals in the space, the competition has not stopped new startups from entering the fray and Zing is the latest player in the game. Founded in 2024 by Tarun Arora and Rachit Sahi, Zing offers 10-minute food deliveries.

Its unique selling proposition lies in delivering freshly made meals while its competitors are focussing more on ready-to-cook food items, its founders claim. What also sets Zing apart is that it does not partner with third-party restaurants and has set up its own cloud kitchens. 

The hyperlocal cloud kitchen startup claims to handle over 100 orders daily, with an average order value of INR 220. 

Going forward, the startup has set its eyes on scaling up its operations to 100 kitchens in the next one year and entering Bengaluru and other cities in the Delhi NCR. Alongside, it also plans to work on turning its initial four to five kitchens profitable by 2026. 

Last updated: March 28, 2025

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An FMCG and retail industry professional and an IIM-Calcutta alumnus who started his corporate journey from Hyderabad, Lokesh Krishnan’s obsession for the tantalising aroma of traditional biriyani is like none other.  

Interestingly, this is where he found his sweet spot, as he realised it was a daunting task to find a freshly made plate of dum-cooked biryani. This was when Krishnan realised that he could fill this gap by launching Potful, a unique foodtech startup that serves biryanis made fresh-on-order in clay pots using a dum-cooking style. 

Delivered Fresh Across India

The biriyani market is largely fragmented with unbranded players ruling the roost, unlike other QSR segments that are dominated by top names. Potful tapped into this opportunity by offering a wide array of regional-style biriyanis such as Hyderabadi, Lucknowi, Kolkata, Bengaluru Donne, and Ambur. 

Potful’s cloud kitchen model allows it to maintain flexibility, scalability, and capital efficiency without compromising on the quality and flavours of India’s most ordered dish on quick food delivery platforms. The brand also uses a de-skilled cooking process that helps it maintain consistency in taste across locations. 

The D2C brand works in partnership with quick food delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy while also managing one’s deliveries through its website and application. 

Serving The South Spices Up Revenue 

Potful has emerged as South India’s largest handi biryani brand with 27 cloud kitchens across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai. With a strong focus on maintaining consistency in taste, the D2C brand has been able to keep up a 51% repeat rate, an average order value of INR 700, and an average customer rating of 4.4. 

For the financial year 2023-2024 (FY24), Potful recorded a revenue of INR 41.4 Cr, a slight rise from INR 35 Cr a year back. The startup’s existing stores have seen a more than 45% increase.

In FY25, the brand expects to boost its revenue by nearly to cross INR 67.63 Cr. The D2C brand aims to turn profitable while also reaching the milestone of INR 100 Cr in revenues by the next fiscal.

In the longer run, the D2C brand wants to expand its reach to over 100 kitchens across eight cities in the country, as it takes the revenue to INR 433 Cr.

[Authored By Anirudh Trivedi]

The post How Potful Is Spicing Up India’s Biryani Market With Regional Flavours appeared first on Inc42 Media.

For Priyanka Nawani, makeup was never just about enhancing appearances — it was a form of self-expression and empowerment. As a professional makeup artist, she understood the power of high-quality beauty products but realised that most affordable cosmetic options in India suffered from severe quality issues, while premium brands remained out of reach for many consumers. 

This growing disparity in the beauty industry inspired her to team up with Mohit Pardasani to create Flicka Cosmetics, a brand that merges luxury and affordability without compromise.

Catering To An Underserved Market With Quality And Affordability

Founded in 2017, Flicka Cosmetics set out to revolutionise the Indian beauty market with high-performance, vegan, cruelty-free, and FDA-certified makeup. Today, the brand has carved a niche for itself in India’s beauty industry, catering to the country’s burgeoning middle class and filling the void left by expensive global brands.

Flicka Cosmetics recognised a critical gap in India’s $33 Bn beauty and personal care market. While global players dominated the premium segment, consumers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities struggled to find high-quality makeup at reasonable prices. With over 500 retail counters nationwide, Flicka focussed on creating products designed specifically for Indian skin tones and climate conditions, offering formulations that were lead-free, sulphate-free, and paraben-free.

Its flagship products, including the Silk Touch Primer & Moisturiser, The Base Story Foundation, and Flawless Femme HD Foundation, quickly became customer favorites, with multiple sold-out cycles and pre-bookings. The brand also prioritises consumer education, helping users make informed choices about the ingredients in their makeup and avoid harmful chemicals.

Accelerating Growth With A Multi-Channel Retail Strategy

2024 proved to be a landmark year for Flicka Cosmetics, marked by an 80% growth in overall revenue. The brand leveraged quick commerce and scaled its presence on Nykaa, one of India’s largest beauty platforms. This expansion, combined with Flicka’s entry into three new Indian states, reinforced its mission to serve a wider audience. 

The D2C brand’s revenue grew from INR 9.45 Cr in FY23 to INR 10.95 Cr in FY24, fuelled by an expanding customer base, better brand recognition, and deeper penetration into the Indian beauty market. With plans to reach INR 24 Cr in FY25, Flicka is setting the stage for rapid scaling through new product launches, strategic market expansion, and deeper engagement with consumers.

The brand is working on an aggressive growth strategy to achieve INR 100 Cr in revenue within the next two years. Expanding its quick commerce presence for faster deliveries and better accessibility remains a key focus, along with scaling up on major marketplaces. Flicka is also strengthening its retail footprint across 1000 offline stores in the next phase of growth while innovating with new product categories based on evolving beauty trends.

[Authored By Anirudh Trivedi]

The post Can Flicka Cosmetics Take On SUGAR And Lakmé With Its Affordable Premium Makeup? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

When Priyanka and Akash Mehta welcomed their first child, they found themselves facing a new challenge — keeping their home organised while managing the ever-changing needs of a growing family. Like many Indian households, they struggled with space constraints, overflowing cupboards, and the constant need for functional storage. This led them to realise a broader market gap in India’s home organisation space, inspiring them to create Homestrap in 2016.

What started as a simple idea to make storage more efficient soon turned into a full-fledged brand dedicated to offering aesthetically pleasing, smart storage solutions tailored for Indian homes. Today, Homestrap has empowered over four million customers, providing practical and stylish organisation solutions that seamlessly blend function with design.

Innovating Storage For The Indian Household

India’s home organisation market remains largely unstructured, with traditional storage options often lacking durability, efficiency, and visual appeal. Homestrap addresses this by designing products that cater specifically to the needs of Indian consumers, considering factors like humid weather, dusty environments, and fabric diversity.

The brand’s extensive product range includes stackers for clothes, saree covers, moisture absorbers, functional organisers, and foldable storage boxes. Among its bestsellers, the patented Clothes Stacker helps optimise wardrobe space, while the Saree Cover ensures delicate fabrics stay protected from dust and moisture. 

The Moisture Absorber has become a staple in Indian homes, tackling dampness and preserving stored items, and the Foldable Storage Box provides a sturdy yet space-saving solution for everyday storage needs. Homestrap’s premium Gulmohar Collection brings a touch of elegance to organisation, offering stylish yet functional organisers perfect for wedding trousseaus and daily essentials.

Scaling Up Through Omnichannel Expansion

From an online-first model, Homestrap has successfully expanded into an omnichannel retail strategy, ensuring its products are easily accessible across platforms. The brand has built a strong presence on major marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart, catering to urban and semi-urban customers alike. Quick commerce platforms such as Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart have further accelerated its growth by addressing immediate customer needs through instant delivery.

The brand’s market positioning has been further strengthened by its appearance on Shark Tank India Season 2, where it secured equity and debt funding from Anupam Mittal. 

Homestrap’s revenue for FY24 reached INR 29.73 Cr, marking a 49% increase from the previous fiscal year. With a strong demand for home organisation solutions, the D2C brand expects to reach INR 50 Cr in FY25 and aims to cross INR 80 Cr by 2026. The brand is focused on expanding its retail footprint, growing its quick commerce presence, and introducing new product lines that cater to evolving consumer needs.

[Authored By Anirudh Trivedi]

The post Can Homestrap Become The IKEA Of Smart Storage Solutions In India? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Zaid Sait’s journey into the bakery business was rooted in his family’s 35-year legacy, where he witnessed the transformation of a small artisan bakehouse into a large-scale industrial bakery. This experience exposed him to the challenges and opportunities in India’s growing bakery market. 

Recognising the increasing demand for preservative-free, high-quality baked goods, he launched Zed The Baker in March 2018 with the mission of making fresh, artisanal products accessible to Indian consumers.

Bringing Authentic Parisian Bakery Culture To India

Zed The Baker sits comfortably between mass-market Iyengar bakeries and expensive global brands, offering premium baked goods without the hefty price tag. Inspired by authentic Parisian bakery culture, the brand delivers fresh, preservative-free offerings that maintain consistent taste, affordability, and hygiene. The D2C brand’s product line includes bestsellers like Belgian Chocolate Truffle, Tres Leches Cakes, Tiramisu, New York Cheesecake, and Butter Croissants, all crafted with a focus on quality and authenticity.

Unlike many premium brands that struggle with import costs and inconsistent raw materials, Zed The Baker prioritises local sourcing and precise inventory control to maintain the quality and freshness of its offerings. The brand’s positioning as an accessible yet premium bakery has resonated with consumers, allowing it to carve out a niche in the Indian bakery industry.

Expanding Its Footprint In India’s Bakery Market

Zed The Baker has steadily expanded, operating 10+ outlets across Bengaluru, strengthening its presence through a combination of retail stores and quick commerce integrations. Its online presence on Swiggy and Zomato ensures that customers across the city can enjoy fresh-baked goods with a 30-minute delivery guarantee. The offline strategy focuses on retail stores in prime locations to maximise foot traffic and build brand loyalty.

The brand has overcome several industry challenges, including maintaining shelf life for preservative-free products, educating customers about the benefits of artisanal baking, and scaling operations without compromising quality. By tackling these hurdles head-on, Zed The Baker continues to gain traction in a competitive market.

Growth Trajectory 

Zed The Baker recorded a revenue increase from INR 8.88 Cr in FY23 to INR 10.40 Cr in FY24, despite challenges related to inventory control and quality scaling. The brand is on track to achieve INR 14 Cr in revenue for FY25, driven by strategic retail expansion and a strong foothold in fast commerce. By 2026, Zed The Baker aims to operate 40 stores under its brand and sub-brands, tapping into strategic locations to bridge market gaps.

To support this ambitious growth, the D2C brand is focusing on a tech-driven, centralised production model that will streamline operations while maintaining product quality. 

With a team of 140 and over 1.6 lakh products sold to date, Zed The Baker competes against the likes of Theobroma, Café Noir, and Smoor.

[Authored By Anirudh Trivedi]

The post How Zed The Baker Is Making India Fall In Love With Parisian Hotcakes appeared first on Inc42 Media.

What’s next after OpenAI and DeepSeek? Now that these tech startups have hit the innovation sweet spot, the ChatGPT parent is reportedly eyeing a funding round that could value it at $340 Bn, more than 2x its current valuation of $157 Bn, while the Chinese disruptor is mulling outside funding for the first time. Presumably, they will continue raising huge sums to grow fast and innovate. 

However, not all AI-driven innovation stories require such massive investments. A new breed of automation startups is now working on AI tools and models to help enterprises ditch time-consuming and effort-intensive manual processes. Among these is a growing cohort who has moved beyond typical big data analytics and traditional AI-ML systems, focussing instead on GenAI to offer tailored solutions and personalised experiences based on enhanced decision-making. 

The reason? AI has already gained momentum in four key sectors – BFSI, CPG and retail, healthcare, and industrials & automotive – and their AI adoption will likely account for 60% of India’s potential GVA worth $500 Bn. In fact, the evolution of India’s techade is firmly linked to world-leading AI adoption across industries, especially those struggling to extract insights from large datasets, handle cumbersome documentation and automate repetitive tasks.    

Given the rising requirement for enterprise AI solutions to spur commercial success, Udaipur-based 9AI is developing a wide range of analytics and automation tools. “Many companies use off-the-shelf automation tools, as few innovators have genuinely unlocked the capabilities of advanced, generative AI to drive transformational change. This, in turn, stifles growth, raises costs and prevents businesses from reaching their full potential,” said Garvit Chouhan, who teamed up with college mates Aaditya Saini and Kaustub Pandey to set up the bootstrapped venture. 

The startup is rooted in a shared belief that businesses should be able to operate more efficiently and with greater insight by leveraging AI to drive decision-making and innovation. Rather than creating point solutions for specific tasks, the founders designed and developed an AI platform capable of automating entire processes. Furthermore, these AI solutions can be built into industry-specific workflows with minimal disruption. 

9AI combines its deeptech R&D with AI and agile operational practices on its SaaS platform to automate complex workflows, improve decision-making accuracy and reduce processing times and human errors, driving down costs all the time.

It has three distinct revenue models to cater to businesses of all sizes. The first is an outsourcing model, including a one-time development fee with annual maintenance. The second is an agency model involving a monthly development fee and yearly maintenance. Finally, there is a partnership model, where the monthly development fee is significantly lower in exchange for product equity or revenue sharing.

Chouhan says the partnership model contributes 40% of the startup’s revenue. “For AI to succeed truly, it has to be tailored to the needs of each business. That’s why we offer these flexible revenue models. We want to partner with our clients to help them scale rather than deliver a one-size-fits-all solution.”      

Backed by iStart Rajasthan, a flagship initiative of the state government for supporting innovative startups, 9AI clocked INR 5 Cr in revenue in FY24 and expects a 4-6x jump in the current financial year.

From Hackathons To Real-World Impact: How 9AI Is Transforming Industries

The founders met during their undergraduate days at the College of Technology and Engineering (CTAE), Udaipur, and bonded over their passion for technology and deep interest in solving operational challenges. They participated in CTAE hackathons and worked on a series of side projects such as developing a CRM SaaS platform to manage ecommerce after-sales services. Chouhan later joined IIT-Madras to specialise in data science and programming and participated in an entrepreneurship programme at Y Combinator.   

The trio’s initial foray into technology development to resolve real-time business challenges paved the path for a broader platform, and 9AI was launched with Chouhan at the helm. “Our technical USP lies in our comprehensive integration of large language models [LLMs] and advanced data pipelines that ‘understand’ complex documents and zero in on the action required. Our operational USP is our ability to rapidly integrate newly developed AI solutions into existing enterprise processes and deploy them as soon as possible,” the CEO said.

Here is a quick look at 9AI tools and use cases across industries and pilot projects.

Enterprise solutions at scale: 9AI develops business automation tools tailored to address specific challenges for various industries, from insurance and finance to education, retail and more. To begin with, it has automated claims processing for a public sector insurer using AI-driven triage, including document analysis, claim assessment and categorisation based on criticality and complexity. The outcome: Processing takes 70% less time, and there is greater accuracy overall, optimising the claims handling workflow and enhancing the customer experience.

In mortgage finance, it has automated document verification and loan processing, slashing processing time by 60% and minimising errors. It has also developed a cutting-edge assessment tool to evaluate hundreds of subjective test responses at a fraction of the time and cost consumed by dozens of human evaluators. Additionally, 9AI has built intelligent search and personalised recommendation engines that boost engagement and drive conversions by delivering relevant content to the right audience.

AI agents for multi-channel services: As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pointed out at CES 2025, the world is entering the age of agentic AI, and the shift is worth a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity. Unlike GenAI, which creates content and tools, AI agents carry out a variety of tasks and manage routine processes across industries while making decisions based on real-time data. (Think of a customer-facing chatbot on a retail or a banking site: We know their critical importance.) 

In sync with the latest industry trend, 9AI makes custom-built AI agents for advanced automation and intelligent decision-making. These AI agents can be integrated with multiple communication channels, including email, call, WhatsApp and website/app, ensuring consistent and intelligent interactions with minimum human interventions.

Here, the retail sector benefits most. For instance, a CRM-lead generation bot enables up to a 30% rise in conversion. Fitted with existing systems, it can enhance sales workflows, driving efficiency and revenue.

LLM fine-tuning: The startup incorporates business-specific data and optimises existing language models to deliver contextually relevant outputs, helping businesses derive insights from vast datasets.

Visual data analysis and document processing: 9AI provides various image processing solutions such as object detection, similarity analysis and segmentation. Additionally, it can generate images based on user-defined inputs. It also offers automated document parsing, precise data extraction and intelligent classification to improve workflows and enhance operational efficiency.

Data solutions & ML training: The startup creates robust data pipelines to ensure reliable data analysis and provides comprehensive training modules for machine learning. This means 9AI has in place an end-to-end data integration ecosystem that covers everything from data ingestion, porting, processing, and model training to deployment and monitoring. It helps businesses optimise their AI workflows while data is managed seamlessly and models perform at their best, all while providing the flexibility to scale as requirements evolve.    

Open-source integration: 9AI also deploys and integrates open-source AI models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, Llama and others, offering businesses a dynamic blend of flexibility and cost-efficiency.    

iStart Rajasthan Provided The Right Ecosystem To Drive 9AI’s Growth

In the fast-evolving world of AI, early support can make all the difference between an idea that fades and one that scales. For 9AI, a rising player in this space, that critical backing came from iStart Rajasthan, the state government’s flagship initiative. It is no run-of-the-mill incubator, providing instead essential infrastructure, expert mentorship and valuable market access to sharpen the startup’s vision and accelerate its growth.

At its state-of-the-art Udaipur facility, iStart offered a collaborative and dynamic work environment equipped with modern labs, high-speed internet and essential office resources, giving the 9AI team all the vital tools to refine its tech offerings. But the real impact extended beyond infrastructure. Its deep network of industry veterans and domain experts allowed the startup to connect with mentors who helped shape its business model and go-to-market strategy.

The initiative also played a key role in business development, enabling 9AI to validate its solutions in real-world settings as it worked with government agencies and private enterprises. As a result, the number of pilots grew, and the new players gained rapid traction in the competitive industry. 

“I would say iStart bridges the gaps between ideation, innovation, execution and commercialisation. Its early-stage support laid the groundwork for scalable development and quick deployment of AI solutions. The ecosystem has moulded our strategy, enhanced our product quality and given us the confidence to scale our solutions,” said Chouhan.

What’s Next For 9AI Amid India’s Artificial Intelligence Boom

The AI and GenAI models and their applications will continue to grow as enterprise adoption has kicked in at scale. Globally, the intelligent process automation market (which covers all sorts of business and production-related automated systems) is estimated to reach $67.7 Bn by 2034 from $17.3 Bn in 2024, clocking a CAGR of 14.6%. India is set to mirror the global trend, given that 70% of GenAI startups are now catering to enterprises alone, and businesses of all sizes are keen to embrace the AI age motto – automation anywhere for greater efficiency, fewer costs and better earnings. 

The current market dynamics have opened a massive opportunity for tech enablers like 9AI and its peers. They can soon build an automation-led digital transformation ecosystem driven by AI-powered operations, insights and decision-making skills. Add to that the global resurgence of venture capital funding in the AI space – $100 Bn in 2024, more than 80% increase from $55.6 Bn in the previous year – and all seems hunky-dory for enterprise-first GenAI startups.    

In tune with the evolving scenario, 9AI will focus on breakthrough innovations in GenAI and deeptech to cater to diverse sectors and refine its existing solutions based on feedback. It will expand its core team and strengthen its strategic partnerships to validate new use cases and drive growth. It is also planning to set up a top-notch AI research facility.

In the long term, 9AI eyes overseas expansion and global partnerships with technology firms and research institutions to develop advanced model architectures and contribute to the evolution of Artificial General Intelligence. (For context, AGI is still a hypothetical stage where AI will have human-like intelligence and capabilities.)

Despite the increasing adoption of GenAI, the founding team at 9AI is fully aware that industry trends and investment strategies may undergo a paradigm shift in the current year. Until now, billions of dollars have been spent on foundation models as VCs are willing to bet big on original research and innovation. Now that the base has been built, thanks to OpenAI, DeepSeek and the like, investors could be more eager to fund enterprise tools and applications built on existing models and LLMs for sustainable growth and immediate profitability. Essentially, vertical AI may soon emerge as a more attractive investment choice, contrary to the horizontal approach, which became popular initially.

It is difficult to predict future trends at this point, but 9AI is working smart, ensuring that no loopholes are left unattended. It has started offering industry-specific automation solutions from Day one, focussing on precision and targeting document-heavy, manual workflows that waste time and resources and drive costs. However, its R&D for deeptech innovations and niche models are, by no means, discarded. Yes, core research will call for substantial capital, but the outcome, as transformational as ChatGPT, will continue to attract big investors.

Meanwhile, 9AI must cater to evolving enterprise needs while scaling effectively as AI adoption continues to reshape industries at a fast clip. With India positioning itself as a global AI hub, the coming years will test how well the company can adapt, innovate and carve its niche.

The post How 9AI Is Automating Workflows For Indian Enterprises appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Milk is a staple in Indian households, but its purity has long been in question. From dilution to harmful chemicals, the issue of adulteration runs deep in India’s dairy sector. However, the problem isn’t just about purity — labels can be misleading, storage can compromise freshness, and even premium brands fall short of delivering true transparency.

The founders of Doodhvale Farms — Aman J Jain, Ishu Jain, Sanjay Jain, and Sudhir Jain — faced this challenge firsthand. In search of safe milk for their own families, they did what few would — they started a small farm with just two cows. Their belief was simple: by overseeing every step of the process, they could eliminate the shortcuts and malpractices plaguing the dairy industry.

But within two months, they realised the scale of the problem. Even their own employees, trained in traditional dairy industry norms, were cutting corners. This was a wake-up call — fixing dairy in India would require a complete overhaul, not just good intentions.

With that realisation, Doodhvale Farms was born in 2019 — a farm-to-home dairy brand that is not just about milk, but about rebuilding trust in what should be the purest household staple.

Breaking Barriers In The Dairy Industry

Unlike conventional dairy brands that rely on preservatives and middlemen, Doodhvale Farms ensures complete transparency with its lab-tested, farm-fresh milk. Every batch undergoes rigorous testing before reaching consumers, eliminating any concerns about dilution or contamination.

While most milk on the market is stored for days before consumption, the brand’s vertically integrated model ensures direct delivery from farm to home within hours of milking. Some of its flagship products include Cow A2 Vedic Desi Ghee, which is slow-cooked using the ancient Bilona method to preserve its rich aroma and Ayurvedic benefits. 

The dairy brand also specialises in premium A2 dairy products, sourced from indigenous Sahiwal and Gir cows, and high-protein buffalo milk. Its products, including Malai A2 Paneer and Royal A2 Buffalo Milk, cater to health-conscious consumers seeking authentic dairy nutrition.

It also offers a subscription-based model, allowing families to receive fresh, nutrient-rich milk without worrying about daily sourcing.

Freshness Fuelled Growth

Doodhvale Farms has witnessed remarkable growth, fueled by the increasing demand for premium, unadulterated dairy products. In FY23, the company reported a revenue of INR 15 Cr, which surged 80% to INR 27 Cr in FY24. Continuing this trajectory, it closed CY24 at INR 38 Cr, marking a 60% jump from the previous year.

Beyond financial growth, the brand has significantly expanded its footprint — from 5 cities to 15 — bringing fresh, farm-to-home dairy to a wider audience. Initially focused on D2C sales via its app, Doodhvale Farms has since diversified, launching Exclusive Brand Outlets (EBOs), partnering with marketplaces, and entering quick commerce to enhance accessibility and convenience.

Backed by a $4.1 Mn Series A funding round from investors such as Atomic Capital, Singularity Early Opportunities Fund, Bharat Founders Fund, Indigram Labs Foundation, and HT Media Ventures, the company is now gearing up for its next phase of expansion. By FY25, it targets INR 42 Cr in revenue, with plans to scale to 50+ cities by 2026 and 100+ EBOs to strengthen its offline presence.

With sustainability at its core, Doodhvale Farms is actively expanding farmer partnerships and adopting ethical dairy farming practices to ensure quality, transparency, and environmental responsibility — preserving not just purity in milk, but also trust in every bottle.

[Authored By Pooja Yadav]

The post How Doodhvale Farms Is Taking On Dairy Conglomerates With Its Purity Promise appeared first on Inc42 Media.

When Siddharth Suneja, a serial entrepreneur from New Delhi, became a father in 2019, he met with a dearth of high-quality products for kids in the Indian market.  

This was when he knew that he was looking at a significant gap, many parents like him were struggling to get their hands on quality kids’ essentials, including lunch boxes, water bottles and backpacks. 

Committed to bridging this gap, he joined forces with his brother, Sumit, and launched Rabitat in February 2020. 

At the outset, Siddharth’s vision to offer a range of safe, high-quality food-contact products, designed for kids between two and eight years of age, fuelled their endeavour. Today, the brand commands 16 SKUs, including tiffin boxes, insulated water bottles, feeding bottles, and training cups, just to name a few.

Delivering High-Quality Kids’ Essentials

In the last four years, Rabitat has carved out a niche in the kids’ food storage container market in India. Along with selling via its website, platforms like Amazon and FirstCry serve as its major sales channels. The D2C brand leverages quick commerce platforms to boost its sales. 

Targeting a discerning segment of Indian parents — who are often highly skeptical and seek only the best for their children — Rabitat aims to earn their trust by providing BPA-free, safe, and high-quality baby and toddler products.

The brand operates in the local food storage container industry that is projected to grow by more than 5% CAGR in the next five years. Rabitat, with its niche market positioning, is eyeing to grab a juicy chunk of this growing opportunity.

Rabitat’s INR 100 Cr Ambition 

Notably, the company’s revenues for the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) stood at INR 16 Cr, up 23% from INR 13 Cr a year ago.

For FY25, the brand is expected to close its top line at INR 32 Cr, marking a 100% growth compared to FY24. One of the key reasons behind this is the brand’s shift to manufacturing in India, with over 80% of its products now made within the country.

In the long term, the company aims to expand its market presence while strengthening the brand in its strong ecommerce sales channels. The company is also eyeing to broaden its quick commerce availability to reach its customers within minutes. 

By FY26, Rabitat expects to cross the INR 100 Cr mark in annual revenue. It aims to emerge in the black by May 2025.

However, meeting aspirations won’t come easy as the brand will have to lock horns with traditional players like Milton and Borosil and newer brands such as Basil, which, too, have set their sights on churning INR 100 Cr in ARR by next year.

While this industry gives significant leeway to make strides, it also demands continuous innovation. As of now, it would be interesting to see how Rabitat places its aces to win against its competition.

[Authored By Anirudh Trivedi]

The post Can Rabitat Do To Kids’ Essentials What Tupperware Did To Home Storage? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Who could be a better guarantee for your money in India than Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy or Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani? Two individuals bit the bait of fake images that eventually led to an INR 95 Lakh fraud. While someday a Mumbai-based doctor is duped INR 7 Lakh in a share market scam, a Bengaluru chartered accountant is conned into an INR 23 Lakh trickery on some other day. Such stories hardly surprise us any more as newspapers and tubes keep flashing such incidents almost every day.  

What makes a consumer trust a product? A credible face, beyond doubt. Thanks to artificial intelligence, bringing faces into the picture has never been easier. Scammers have leveraged deepfake technology to feature business icons like Murthy and Ambani in fake trading apps, driving people into the trap.

Not the business tycoons alone, a few months back, a deepfake video featured actor Rashmika Mandanna’s face digitally altered onto British-Indian social media figure Zara Patel. The video gained significant traction due to Rashmika’s popularity.

The Delhi High Court recently directed a subcommittee under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to submit its report on deepfakes by July 21. In the petition, journalist and India TV editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma sought regulations on deepfakes and directives to block public access to apps that facilitate the creation of such synthetic content.

Deepfakes, an emergent type of threat falling under the greater and more pervasive umbrella of synthetic media, use a form of AI or ML to create believable, realistic videos, pictures, audio, and text of events which never happened, says a US Homeland Security communication. 

From face-swapping and voice synthesis to gesture and body movement manipulation, deepfake scams are evolving rapidly. Hybrid deepfakes, which combine multiple AI techniques, are making fraudsters even more powerful. On the other hand, AI-powered deepfake detection tools are also emerging to combat the threat.

It seems to be the return of Frankenstein in this age of artificial intelligence. 

As deepfakes take a $500,000 toll on businesses on the average and burn a $680,000 hole in the pockets of large enterprises around the world in 2024, India stares at INR 70,000 Cr deepfake frauds this year, surging 550% since 2019. On the back of this simmering threat, a battle is brewing up on the country’s digital turf, where AI is being used to take on the menace unleashed by itself. 

Neural Defend entered the battlefront to take this cerebral war to the next level. Founded in 2024 by Piyush Verma, Sivashankar Selvarajan, and Sumit Singh, the Delhi NCR-based startupfocusses on developing AI-powered detection tools that could identify deepfake manipulations across images, videos, and audio.

A Shared Vision: Battling AI-Driven Identity Theft

Neural Defend was born out of a vision shared by the founder trio. Selvarajan, Singh and Verma recognised the growing threat of AI-generated deepfakes and identity fraud.

Selvarajan is seasoned in the AI domain across industries, starting his career with USD Global as an AI software developer working primarily for Intel, in early 2020. This was when he met Singh, who later introduced him to Verma. The three quickly realised that they shared a similar mindset, particularly when it came to the risks associated with AI-generated content.

As AI technology advanced, they saw a much bigger problem unfolding that was far beyond financial fraud. “Identity theft by the use of generative AI is emerging as one of the biggest threats for the future, perhaps second only to climate change,” said Selvarajan.

People are losing control over their own identities, with deepfake technology making it easier than ever to manipulate images, videos, and audio in dangerously realistic ways. In 2023, deepfake-driven face swaps used to bypass identity verification surged by 704%. AI-powered language models have made phishing scams more common and convincing, manipulating people into revealing sensitive information at an unprecedented scale, says a World Economic Forum report. It estimates global cybercrime at $10.5 Tn annually by 2025, up from $3 Tn in 2015.

By the use of AI and spoofing software, scammers have been creating fake police stations and even fake court hearings or using the voice of relatives to dupe victims. A textile tycoon was defrauded $830,000 last year after fraudsters summoned him to an online hearing at a fake Supreme Court that threatened him with jail.

The techie trio noted that only a handful of companies were tackling deepfake detection, and even those solutions were fragmented. AI-generated content was evolving rapidly, but there was no universal mechanism to detect it effectively.

The realisation led them to a decisive moment. Instead of just observing the problem, they wanted to build a solution. This is where the idea for Neural Defend took shape. “Our goal was not just to create another AI business but to restore trust in digital content and provide people with a way to safeguard their identities,” Selvarajan said.

“The name Neural Defend reflects our goal. Neural represents AI and neural networks, while Defend underscores our commitment to fighting against the misuse of AI,” he added.

The founders carried out extensive market research to zero in on the problem. They analysed various industries where deepfake detection was crucial such as dating apps, telecom, call centres, and video verification. Discussions with experts revealed that deepfake threats were rampant in eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) providers.

They found that over 150 Mn eKYC verifications were conducted every year. This data point validated their concerns and even expanded their initial problem statement, highlighting the need for deepfake detection across images, videos, and audio.

The Proprietary Model: Preventing Deepfake Manipulation

Neural Defend has developed its own proprietary algorithm, avoiding open-source dependencies and securing four patents so far. To ensure seamless integration, it designed the solution as an API, rather than a standalone application.

This API-based approach allows eKYC verification companies to strengthen their existing systems without major code modifications. Selvarajan said clients can simply send an image, video, or audio file and receive an instant deepfake detection result.

The solution focuses on deepfake detection across image, audio, and video verification. The startup is targeting fintech companies, small finance banks, and eKYC verification providers to enhance security in digital identity verification. Neural Defend is also working with Fortune 500 companies and major video conferencing platforms to address security risks associated with deepfake-based identity fraud in virtual meetings.

Financial institutions and digital verification providers use video-based authentication, but deepfake advancements allow fraudsters to impersonate real individuals. The API integrates into video verification systems, analyse each frame and audio signal in real time to detect deepfakes, face masks, and synthetic voices, ensuring secure identity verification.

For video conferencing securities, it offers a plugin for platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. Similar to AI note-takers, it continuously analyses video and audio feeds to verify user authenticity and detect AI-generated intrusions.

Online interviews are increasingly vulnerable to deepfake-based impersonation, where candidates use lip-syncing or AI-generated avatars to cheat the process. Neural Defend’s solution also helps hiring platforms detect such manipulations, ensuring only genuine candidates participate.

The startup operates on a usage-based pricing model, charging per API call for verification services and per minute of video conferencing usage.

The Goal: Touching The $10 Mn ARR Landmark

The market for AI deepfake detector tools is projected to grow significantly from  $1.3 Bn in 2024 to $4.1 Bn by 2032, reflecting a CAGR of 15.1%. The threat is affirmed by the McAfee’s State of the Scamiverse report, which shows how deepfake scams can be created for just $5 (less than INR 430) in under 10 minutes.  

The looming threat and escalating demand for solutions appear promising for businesses like Neural Defend. The startup recently raised over $600,000 in a pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). According to the cofounder, this capital will sustain operations for the near future. Riding on the booming demand, Neural Defend is preparing for a seed round at a higher valuation.

Over the next 12 months, Neural Defend aims to secure at least 10 customers. “Given the scale of verification needs, where a single company can conduct 150 Mn API verifications a day, even acquiring two clients could make the company profitable,” Selvarajan said.

The startup aims to reach $10 Mn in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within a year. It also plans to expand globally by tailoring its deepfake detection solutions for specific industries and ensuring seamless adoption across markets.

Although the opportunity for such startups is indeed huge, a challenge is emerging with cybersecurity giants like McAfee rolling out the AI-powered McAfee Deepfake Detector service in India. As the AI-versus-AI duel sets off a storm in India, it remains to be seen how small startups like Neural Defend brainstorm over the way to success.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post This Startup Wants To Make Deepfake Detection As Easy As An API Call appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Are dark stores getting darker for quick commerce? 

As Indian quick commerce platforms tried to gather speed – from fast to ultra-fast delivery – the topline for the Q-Com Big Three became loftier, soaring past $1 Bn in FY24, but the bottomline for Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart slumped with cracks showing up in their business models. Costs are scorching their coffers and deliveries turning slower as they promise to outpace reality. 

Blinkit’s adjusted EBITDA loss widened 15.7% in the third quarter of FY25 from INR 89 Cr a year back, battering down parent Zomato’s net profit 57.2% to INR 59 Cr. Swiggy, on its books, saw consolidated net loss deepen 39.1% to INR 799 Cr with INR 527.68 Cr attributed to its quick commerce arm Instamart. While Zepto is yet to disclose its financials, CEO Aadit Palicha recently stated on social media that the industry burns around INR 5,000 Cr quarterly, with more than half of this attributed to Zepto alone. 

As quick commerce slowed down, global brokerage firm BofA Securities downgraded ratings for Zomato and Swiggy, citing concerns over growth and mounting losses.

Time for the quick commerce giants to review their dark store blueprint? 

Or, time for small retailers, who had to bear the brunt of the rapid strides of deep-pocket quick commerce platforms, to take it to the chin and take another shot to revive and regain? 

Mumbai-based husband-wife duo Alok and Neeta Chawla saw rays of hope in the changing dynamics of quick commerce dark stores. They were joined by friend Virendra Kumar Chauhan. Their shared vision was simple – help small neighbourhood retailers to reclaim their loyal customer base. 

They set up Kiko Live in July 2020 to digitise and empower small businesses like kiranas, pharmacies, stationeries, and even paan-wallahs. It helps them set up online storefronts in barely 24 hours and takes them on a digital journey, enhancing their visibility and, in turn, their revenues. As a seller network partner on ONDC, Kiko Live connects retailers to buyer apps like Paytm, PhonePe, and MyStore, boosting their online presence. It also provides automated WhatsApp ordering and integrates D2C brands and B2B distributors with local retailers for faster deliveries. 

“For a typical neighbourhood retailer, 10-15% of the business comes from home deliveries, through WhatsApp or phone calls. This is the segment that the dark store-driven quick commerce has dented most,” said Alok Chawla, a seasoned entrepreneur who believes that the dark store model of quick commerce is unsustainable.

Making Of A Cornerstone For Retailers In Crisis

In his over 16 years of experience in the sphere of payments, ecommerce, and retail, Alok had cofounded ZiPCASH, a prepaid wallet company later acquired by Ola and renamed Ola Money, in 2006. Three years later, he had founded TRISTAR International Trading Operations, which focussed on foreign trade and retail distribution. 

In 2012, he launched Gizmobaba, an electronics brand that pioneered influencer-led marketing, collaborating with over 700 TikTok influencers. The business was highly profitable until it was impacted by the ban on TikTok and COVID-19 lockdowns, he said.

Locked at home, Alok saw the plight of neighbourhood retailers, and was back to the drawing board in search of a solution to their struggle for survival.

“While digital ordering for food via Zomato and Swiggy was available, grocery retail remained largely offline. Small retailers were struggling with store closures and a lack of digital presence, causing them to lose business,” he said. 

The thoughts struck the chord with wife Neeta and friend Virendra. Months of brainstorming followed. “What if we could digitise these small businesses and bring them online? This idea laid the foundation for Kiko. We registered the brand in 2020 but became operational in 2021 after securing seed funding.”

The startup has raised $4.08 Mn so far from investors such as venture catalysts, 9 Unicorns, Powerhouse Ventures, and SOSV.

Dark Store Fallacy 1: Using The Distance Edge 

Quick commerce platforms set up their dark stores as retail outlets optimised for addressing online orders and ensuring quick delivery. These are typically out of bounds for walk-in customers and play a critical component in the business model in the business of quick commerce. These micro-warehouses or fulfillment centres, as they are called, are designed exclusively for online order picking, packing, and dispatching.  

The Kiko founders found the distance edge in favour of the neighbourhood retailers. “Despite the 10-minute delivery promise, the actual time taken (by quick commerce platforms) is often 20-25 minutes, and the cost is high. Several platforms have introduced delivery charges, ranging from INR 10 to INR 60, depending on factors like distance and order value. The moment they start charging INR 75 per delivery, 90% of customers will opt for a slower but more affordable alternative,” Alok said. 

The founders integrated the hyperlocal delivery options into Kiko’s seller panel. These logistics are powered by ONDC, allowing the seller to request a delivery rider with a single click once the order is packed. 

The seller can also choose the self-delivery option. Most sellers opt for self-delivery for very short-distance orders, typically under 1 km, while network logistics handle deliveries farther away.

Dark Store Fallacy 2: Building A Smarter Army Of Retailers

Quick commerce platforms that gained immense success during the lockdown days made it harder for the less organised and digitally backward small retailers to sustain. Consumers increasingly preferred structured catalogues with instant checkouts, while the struggling retailers needed better discoverability beyond their existing customer base. 

Kiko was born at this juncture. To address this shift, the startup transitioned from a live ordering model to a catalogue-driven system and integrated with ONDC, which has revolutionised the digital payments space. This enabled retailers to list their products digitally, reach a wider audience, and scale their business across multiple platforms. “Kiko drives traffic directly to retailers, rather than expecting them to promote individual websites,” Alok said.

Instead of relying on traditional product catalogues – be it printed or verbal – Kiko Live allows its users to place orders through in-app calls with retailers, largely simulating the familiar experience of shopping in a physical store. 

Kiko brought in artificial intelligence (AI) to detect product names mentioned in those conversations, create a cart, and generate a payment link. Retailers could also display products on video, helping customers make informed choices without physically visiting the store. 

The buyer-seller app operates on a retailer-held inventory model, ensuring that small businesses retain control over their stock. It helps retailers maintain their online inventory by linking it to their physical inventory if they have a PoS (point of sales) system. Sellers without a PoS can easily update inventory using a simple Excel upload, which can be done once or twice a day. Additionally, the sellers can also use an out-of-stock toggle to manage availability.

Dark Store Fallacy 3: Making A Unique Approach To Regain The Market 

A host of players in the segment are now attempting to follow a similar strategy. KiranaPro, for instance, is one such platform empowering local kirana stores with AI-driven quick commerce. While both Kiko Live and KiranaPro leverage ONDC to enable quick commerce for local retailers, they differ significantly in their approach and execution.

The Kiko Live app operates with two ends – one for the buyer and another for the seller – and directly enables retailers to list their inventory, manage sales, and fulfill orders. It provides sellers with an integrated inventory system, marketing tools, and operational support, ensuring a seamless transition to online selling. Kiko Live allows buyers to search for products by store, browse seller catalogues, and even paste entire grocery lists for quick cart building.

KiranaPro, on the other hand, focusses on connecting consumers with neighborhood businesses through a voice-based AI model. Customers can place orders by speaking into the app, and the AI processes the request to create the shopping cart. The KiranaPro app does not have its own seller network, instead, it routes customer orders to sellers from other ONDC-integrated platforms like Kiko Live. Its standout feature is its voice-based AI model, which requires users to dictate their shopping lists, instead of manually browsing or selecting products.

Kiko has so far processed over 6.5 Lakh transactions and enjoys a 5 Lakh+ user base, claimed the founder. In contrast, KiranaPro is still in its early stages, refining its product and testing within a smaller user group, as reflected in its 5,000 app downloads so far.

Dark Store Fallacy 4: Mapping The Road Ahead, Resolving The Hurdles

Apart from competition from newer players, Kiko’s biggest challenge is maintaining operational efficiency at the store level. 

“For 30-minute deliveries, each store onboarding the Kiko platform requires 4-7 days of intensive training to streamline operations. The retailer must pick, pack, and have orders ready within 5 minutes, as riders typically arrive within 7-8 minutes. Some stores struggle to maintain these processes once the team exits, leading to deactivation. High-volume stores have adapted by hiring dedicated staff and setting up pickup counters, similar to restaurant delivery setups,” Alok said.

For this, the brand looks to invest heavily in training retailers for 30-minute delivery efficiency to ensure smooth execution. 

Another challenge for the brand has been building credibility among retailers as many of them shied away from digital platforms because of scams that rarely ceased to surface and promises that were hardly met. According to the founder, ONDC has significantly solved this problem. “Before ONDC, we were handling around 200-300 orders a day, now we are doing 3,000+. We aim to reach 10,000+ in the next two to three months.”

Unlike the dark store model that requires heavy upfront investment – to the tune of INR 200 Cr for multiple stores and inventory – ONDC-enabled retail partnerships provide a cost-efficient, scalable solution.

“We charge INR 3,000 that covers onboarding, cataloguing, some marketing activities such as flyer distribution, and handholding for one week,” Alok said. Kiko Live also offers a plan with zero joining fee with limited support.

Joining ONDC has also helped Kiko Live boost its revenue from INR 3-4 Lakh a month to INR 10 Lakh. The brand’s monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) stands at INR 1.5 Cr and it aims to reach INR 5 Cr in the next six months, according to Alok. 

Riding on the success, Kiko plans to widen its key markets, with the blueprint for three major cities drawn up. It is also looking to enter Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

Kiko Live may not yet match the scale of quick commerce giants in terms of revenue, but investor interest in this segment remains strong, signalling a positive market outlook for the brand. Sri Peddu, general partner at Powerhouse Ventures and an investor in Kiko, sees immense potential in these seller apps. 

Dark stores and retailer-led quick commerce will coexist, he said. “There is a huge opportunity in the digital enablement of retail sellers, with the government-run ONDC network serving as a key catalyst in this evolution.”

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post Can Kiko Live Help Kiranas Strike Back At Quick Commerce Giants? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The world’s third-largest startup ecosystem was abuzz with activities in the last month of the financial year 2024-25. Amid a growing number of startups gearing up for the D-Street and investors doubling down on their startup bets, Indian startups raised a whopping $1.1 Bn last month, up 58% from the $636 Mn raised in February.

But, it was the country’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) sector that stole the show, as we (Inc42) unveiled the FAST42 2025 Ranking — the coveted list of India’s 42 fastest-growing D2C brands.

However, while we were at it, we realised how far we have come since 2014. In our 11-year-long voyage, we understood what it takes to patiently navigate through thick and thin and emerge triumphant. 30 Startups to Watch, Inc42’s flagship series, is a testament to the same. 

Just like every month, we are back to shine the spotlight on 30 of India’s hottest early-stage ventures that are on the path to disrupting their respective sectors.

While February’s cohort (56th) featured a balanced mix of startups —from deeptech and AI to fintech and D2C — the 57th edition of 30 Startups to Watch, powered by Google, takes things up a notch. 

This time, we’re spotlighting innovators building humanoid robots or harnessing AI for agriculture. Alongside, second and third-time founders are pounding the startup table with bold new bets.

This edition also has investors who have taken an entrepreneurial leap, proving that the Indian startup ecosystem is full of thrilling opportunities.

Now, without any further delay, here are 30 of the most high-impact Indian startups that caught our eyes in March 2025.

Editor’s Note: The list below is not a ranking of any kind. We have listed the startups alphabetically.

1312 Interactive: Building Indian Games For The World

The Hyderabad-based game publisher, which is focussed on premium PC and console titles, was founded in 2023 by gaming industry veterans Deepak Gurijala and Raviteja Mantena to support Indian game developers in taking their games global. 

With India’s gaming landscape rapidly evolving beyond mobile, 1312 Interactive is working to fill key gaps in publishing, marketing, and production. The studio handpicks nearly completed games, primarily in action-adventure, Metroidvania, and puzzle genres, and helps refine them for a global audience. It offers end-to-end support, from quality assurance and localisation to marketing and distribution.

The startup follows a flexible publishing model, providing developers with financial backing through a minimum guarantee while taking on the responsibility of launching their games. As sales grow, developers earn a bigger share of the revenue.

1312 Interactive is currently focussed on expanding its first three titles: Winds of Arcana, Palm Sugar, and Souls of Bombarika.

The goal is to release 6-7 games annually across platforms like Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, putting India on par with major game-developing nations.

Anmasa: A House Of Nutrient-Rich Foods 

After exiting Milkbasket (acquired by Reliance), Yatish Talvadia has launched a new D2C daily essentials brand, Anmasa, along with Shailendra Upadhyay (founder of Veggie India). Launched in March 2025, Anmasa sells staples like atta, wood-pressed oils, spices, and dry fruits.

Gurugram-based Anmasa became fully operational towards the end of 2024. Currently, the omnichannel startup offers 80+ stock keeping units (SKUs).

The startup’s USP lies in its commitment to providing cold-pressed flour.

Anmasa targets customers who avoid packaged wheat flour from popular brands like Aashirvaad, Pillsbury, or Fortune.

At its current capacity, Talvadia claims to serve more than 2,000 customers through both online and offline channels in Gurugram. The startup is in talks with investors to raise $1 Mn in its pre-seed funding round to expand its presence in the Delhi NCR region.

Anmasa plans to open at least 10 to 12 physical retail outlets, or “experiential centres,” in the region in 2025.

Antithesis: Betting On Beauty And Minimalism

Aparna Saxena, a former partner at Good Capital and ex-member of the Bharat Founders Fund, is on a mission to simplify beauty routines with her new startup, Antithesis. 

Frustrated by the overwhelming number of beauty products that often fail to deliver real results, she saw an opportunity to do things differently.

Antithesis is built on the idea of “the luxury of less” — offering simple, effective beauty solutions backed by data. While the brand hasn’t launched its product lineup yet, it plans to go live by summer 2025.

With India’s beauty and personal care market booming, Antithesis is stepping into a space dominated by players like Nykaa, Conscious Chemist, Minimalist, and Pilgrim. But instead of chasing trends, the brand is betting on minimalism, efficacy, and transparency to stand out.

Arva Health: On A Mission To Transform India’s Fertility Care Landscape

Founded in 2022 by childhood friends Dipalie Bajaj and Nidhi Panchmal, Arva Health is a Bengaluru-based femtech startup addressing India’s fertility challenges. 

The platform offers fertility assessments, expert consultations, egg-freezing guidance, PCOS care, and advanced treatments like IVF and IUI. Through its website and app, users can access 24/7 support from doctors, counsellors, and fertility coaches, making care more accessible.

What started as a personal journey turned into a mission to bridge the awareness and accessibility gap in fertility care. The startup’s founder-led, social media-driven approach has helped it attracted millions of followers. Besides, this approach has also sparked critical conversations around fertility.

Currently operating in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and select rural areas, Arva has served 2,000+ women and witnessed 680% revenue growth, with a steady 38% monthly increase. The NABL-accredited startup partners with leading diagnostic centres like Thyrocare, Redcliffe, and Tata 1MG.

Looking ahead, Arva plans to expand offline with its fertility centres and introduce a men’s fertility vertical.

With India’s IVF market set to cross the $5 Bn mark by 2033, Arva is working to normalise fertility conversations in the country.

axiTrust: MSMEs’ Strategic Financial Partner

Most MSMEs in India struggle with bank guarantees for contracts and orders, tying up valuable resources. Mumbai-based fintech startup axiTrust wants to change this. 

By offering financial products like surety bonds, it’s helping small businesses optimise their capital without the usual collateral hassles.

Founded in 2024 by Aditya Tulsian, Rajeev Chari, and Mukund Daga, axiTrust uses technology to provide real-time financial insights and tailored solutions. 

Its platform integrates smoothly with existing enterprise systems, making it easier for MSMEs to access micro surety bonds and streamline their financial processes.

Beyond financial products, it also offers consulting services, ensuring businesses get solutions that fit their needs. With fresh capital from a $2.6 Mn seed round led by US-based VC firm General Catalyst, the startup is gearing up to expand its team, develop mobile apps, and boost marketing efforts.

With India’s fintech market set to hit $2.1 Tn by 2030, axiTrust is carving out its space by making financial solutions more accessible for MSMEs—helping them grow without unnecessary roadblocks.

Beyond Appliances: Smart Living With Smart Kitchens

After making a mark in restaurant robotics with Mukunda Foods, Eshwar K Vikas is now setting his sights on Indian kitchens. Teaming up with his colleague Rakesh Patel, he launched Beyond Appliances in August 2024 to bring AI-powered innovation to everyday cooking.

The Bengaluru-based startup is reimagining kitchen essentials, starting with smart chimneys and hob-top stoves. Its AI-powered chimneys do more than just suck up smoke — they come with a 7-inch touchscreen, access to OTT and YouTube, predictive maintenance alerts, and a 3D suction system. 

Meanwhile, their Dorado Hobtop features timer-controlled cooking, auto ignition, flame failure safety devices, and digital timers to make cooking safer and more efficient.

With India’s smart kitchen market projected to hit $4.8 Bn by 2030, Beyond Appliances is banking on AI to carve out its niche. But it won’t be an easy ride.

The startup is up against heavyweights like Bosch, Faber, and Glen — brands that have dominated Indian kitchens for years.

By tapping into insights from Mukunda Foods and a network of chefs, Beyond Appliances is fine-tuning its products to better serve Indian households. And so far, the strategy is paying off. Within just six months of launch, the company has already built a strong customer base.

Bonomi: Everyday Coffee At Everyday Prices

For many, the day doesn’t truly begin without a cup of perfectly brewed coffee. Same was the case with Armaan Reet and Vardhman Jain, who set out on a mission to perfect the art of cold brew coffee.

Founded in 2020, Bonomi has been serving affordable, flavourful cold brews in Bengaluru since 2022. It started by serving cold brew and now offers a mix of classic and unique flavours from its two cafes in the city. Beyond Bengaluru, Bonomi ships its cold brews pan-India through its website.  

Interestingly, the startup took an unconventional route to fundraising. About five months ago, Jain turned to social media to seek investors for Bonomi’s seed round. By March 2024, he announced that the round was nearly closed, with just 5% of the funding left to secure.

Bonomi has been EBITDA profitable for the past four months, which is a strong indicator of its sustainable future.

CredResolve: An AI-Powered Debt Collections Platform 

Debt collection remains a major pain point for banks and NBFCs, but GenAI is starting to bridge gaps in this line of work. 

Spearheading this change is Bengaluru-based CredResolve, which uses emerging tech to transform debt recovery and borrower engagement.

Founded in 2023 by Balaji Koustubha, G Prashant Kumar, and Vijay Kumar, CredResolve acts as a bridge between lenders and borrowers, streamlining the entire debt resolution process.

Its AI-driven system scores and categorises borrowers based on their ability to repay. If a borrower defaults, the platform automatically sends digital legal notices and manages litigations online. Additionally, it offers customised workflows for digital communication and provides loan collection agents with daily planners.

CredResolve works with major financial players like IDFC First Bank, L&T Finance, MobiKwik, and Lendingkart.

The Gurugram-based startup recently secured $1.1 Mn in seed funding from UNLEASH Capital Partners and CDM Capital. Last year, it raised $100K in an angel round from PedalStart, Tujala Goud, and others.

Femisafe: Safe & Sustainable Menstrual Solutions

Witnessing firsthand how sanitary pads were being disposed of during the pandemic, childhood friends Noureen Aysha and Naseef Nazar decided to introduce environmentally conscious menstrual health products. 

Launching their  femtech startup Femisafe in 2020, the duo is on a mission to make period care and intimate hygiene more sustainable and accessible. The brand offers innovative, eco-friendly products like menstrual cups, sterilisers, and personal care essentials. 

The startup’s star product is its menstrual cup — a reusable, budget-friendly alternative to pads, priced at under INR 350.  Beyond menstrual care, the brand offers face razors, aloe gels, acne pimple patches, and more.

Focussed on Tier II and Tier III cities, Femisafe is committed to making quality female wellness products accessible while driving awareness for informed health choices.

Firefly Diamonds: Ethically Crafted Lab Grown Diamonds

As lab-grown diamonds gain popularity, both emerging and established players are rushing to capture the market.

One such brand, Firefly Diamonds, was founded in December 2023 by brothers Adit and Aayush Bhansal.

The omnichannel startup sells lab-grown diamond jewellery through its website and retail stores in Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

Firefly Diamonds uses advanced scientific techniques to replicate natural diamond formation in a controlled lab environment. The result? Diamonds that are chemically, physically, and optically identical to mined ones but with a much lower environmental impact.

The startup aims to open 20 more stores in the next two years.

Its entire supply chain — growing, cutting, polishing, and jewellery setting — is based in India.

Recently, Firefly Diamonds raised $3 Mn in seed funding from WestBridge Capital. The Mumbai-based company plans to use the funds to expand its retail presence, enhance its digital reach, and launch new collections.

FitFeast: Stirring India’s Protein Revolution

FitFeast, founded in 2021 by Aditya Poddar, is on a mission to make healthy eating simple and accessible for busy individuals. The D2C startup offers high-protein, tasty, and sustainable snacking options.

Its standout product? Protein shakes that come in convenient 50g sachets. Available in different flavours, these shakes are crafted to be both nutritious and delicious. FitFeast also offers a range of peanut butter and protein chips, all free from trans fats and gluten.

The startup kicked off with a $120K pre-seed funding round led by early-stage accelerator ACLR8 in November last year.

It grabbed attention when it landed an INR 50 Lakh deal on Shark Tank from Shaadi’s Anupam Mittal and Veeba’s Viraj Bahl.

Adding to the momentum, cricketer Axar Patel recently joined as both an investor and brand ambassador, further boosting the brand’s credibility and reach.

FluxGen: Making Industries Water-Positive

FluxGen, founded in 2021 by Ganesh Shankar and Emanuel Deepak, is on a mission to make water management smarter and more efficient. The climate tech startup uses AI and IoT to help industries cut down on water consumption by up to 30% with its end-to-end solution, AquaGen.

AquaGen offers real-time insights by tracking water levels, quality, pressure, and groundwater status while also mapping water flow across facilities.

Big names like Indian Oil, Tata, Adani, and L&T are already on board, alongside 120 other clients.

In just four years, FluxGen has racked up several accolades, including winning the KPMG Global Tech Innovator Competition (GTIC) 2024 and the Microsoft Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact Global Award. NASSCOM and DeitY even named it one of India’s 25 most iconic IoT startups.

The startup recently secured INR 28 Cr in a Pre-Series A round led by IAN Group and others. With this fresh capital, FluxGen is doubling down on innovations in groundwater intelligence, wastewater resource management, and water risk analytics.

GoOAT: Balancing Health, Taste & Convenience

Do you often find yourself running in the nick of time in the morning to reach the office, resulting in sacrificing your breakfast? While you might reach in time, missing out on the first meal of the day isn’t doing you any favours. 

That’s exactly the problem Yash Kalra set out to solve when he launched GoOAT in August 2023. The startup is focussed on making breakfast effortless.

The startup’s main USP lies in its flagship spoon-free high-protein oats series, which it says gets ready for consumption in only 30 seconds. 

These easy-to-prepare oats are packed with protein, sourced from pure whey, and enriched with the goodness of chia seeds, flax seeds, and dried fruit powder. Besides, the oatmeal comes in multiple flavours. 

The D2C nutrition brand raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round led by D2C Insider Super Angels. Besides, investors like Sirona’s Deep and Mohit Bajaj, Boba Bhai’s Dhruv Kohli, among others, also participated in the round.

With this funding, GoOAT plans to expand its product range and invest in R&D to bring more innovative breakfast options to the table.

Harvested Robotics: Automating Indian Farms 

Farming may be one of the world’s oldest professions, but it has always embraced new technology. So, it’s no surprise that AI, robotics, and drones are now making their mark on Indian agriculture.

Leading this tech revolution is Hyderabad-based Harvested Robotics, founded in 2023 by Rahul Arepaka and George Mathew. The startup is tackling one of the biggest challenges farmers face — labour shortages for weeding and harvesting.

Harvested Robotics is developing autonomous robots that can identify, select, and harvest crops with speed and precision. Equipped with AI-powered vision, advanced sensors, and smart decision-making, these robots navigate complex farm environments and handle delicate produce with care

By automating the harvesting process, the startup aims to reduce labour costs, minimise crop waste, and boost yields, all while making farming more sustainable.

iHub Robotics: Redefining The Future With Intelligent Robotics

Robots aren’t just transforming businesses, they might soon become a part of your everyday life. Sounds futuristic? That’s exactly the vision behind iHub Robotics.

Founded in 2022 by Athil Krishna, Akhil K Haridasan, and Sarath S, the Kerala-based startup is building humanoid robots that can recognise emotions, engage in natural conversations, and adapt to different situations seamlessly.

Their flagship robot, Tara Gen 1, is designed to move like a human. It can overcome obstacles, interact with people, answer questions, and even take on various service roles. 

iHub believes Tara could revolutionise industries like healthcare (as a robotic nurse), education (as a teaching assistant), and customer service (as an executive.

Despite being based in Ernakulam, Kerala, iHub is making waves globally. In January 2025, it became India’s first company to be recognised by NVIDIA and was selected for the NVIDIA Humanoid Robotics Program. 

Irame.ai: Enabling Businesses’ Interaction With AI

Founded in 2023 by ex-Spyne executives Kapil Arora, Ajay Mudhai, and Abhinav Sharma, Irame.ai is reimagining how businesses interact with AI. 

The startup helps organisations automate audits, cut operational costs by 80%, and enhance compliance.

At the heart of Irame.ai is Ira, its first autonomous AI agent, designed to simplify every data-driven workflow — from basic statistical analysis to handling complex multi-document processes. 

The platform also analyses customer feedback across surveys, reviews, social media, and support tickets, offering businesses a 360-degree view of customer sentiment and preferences.

Overall by automating feedback analysis, Irame.ai empowers businesses with real-time insights and personalised recommendations, helping them stay ahead of customer needs, improve satisfaction, and drive growth.

Iyaso: AI-Powered Speech Therapy Platform

For many people, speaking fluently can be a daily challenge, whether due to stammering, slurring, or other speech difficulties. 

Traditional speech therapy is valuable, but it often requires long sessions multiple times a week, which can be difficult to fit into busy schedules.

Iyaso, founded in 2023 by Viraj Kulkarni, aims to make speech therapy more accessible and effective through Eloquent, an AI-powered speech training programme. 

With just 10 minutes of daily practice, Eloquent provides structured guidance to help users build confidence and improve fluency at their own pace.

Since its launch, over 15,000 people across 150 countries have used Eloquent to strengthen their communication skills.

The programme incorporates proven techniques such as fluency shaping, stuttering modification, and cognitive restructuring, allowing users to practice in real-world scenarios and track their progress over time.

Beyond training, Iyaso’s AI offers personalised feedback, progress tracking, and even mood checks to support emotional well-being. 

LAT Aerospace: Building The Future Of Mass Aviation

To make flying taxis a reality in India, Zomato’s ex-COO Surobhi Das has announced the launch of her new aerospace startup LAT Aerospace. 

While details about its roadmap are still under wraps, the startup is building a network of high-frequency, low-cost, 24-seater, short take-off and landing, medium-haul aircraft.  

According to reports, the startup has already raised $20 Mn from Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal in a seed funding round. It now aims to raise another $50 Mn in the round. However, there has been no confirmation on this from the startup.

Meanwhile, LAT is not the first startup to bet on making air taxis a reality in the country. Startups like The ePlane Company and Sarla Aviation are also betting on vertical take-off and landing aircraft for urban air mobility and to combat traffic congestion. 

Naarica: Periodcare Gets A New Name

While living in Paris, Mumbai-based Shruti Chand felt there was a mismatch in the quality of products available in developed countries compared to those in India.

One issue that stood out to her was the low-quality period pads many Indian women rely on. Determined to bring a better, more sustainable alternative, she founded Naarica in 2023, introducing reusable period underwear to replace traditional pads.

Naarica’s period underwear features four absorbent layers in the gusset, capable of holding as much as four pads’ worth of flow and lasting for three years. 

The startup is already making waves, selling 10,000 units per month across India and Sri Lanka.

In addition to selling to customers through its website and ecommerce platforms, the startup operates a B2B vertical, which has partnered with over 40 entities like Delhi University, Amazon Distributors, and YoungIndians to sell their products.

The startup recently raised $30K from ace badminton player Saina Nehwal. Naarica is now aiming to reach 10 Lakh customers in India.

Nabhdrishti Aerospace: Building Micro Gas Turbines for Power & Propulsion

For industries that need smarter and more flexible power solutions, traditional combustion engines often fall short. That’s where Nabhdrishti Aerospace comes in.

The startup is building small gas turbines to cater to hybrid urban air mobility, unmanned aerial vehicles and decentralised power generation appliances. Founded by Rohit Chouhan, Arjun Srivatsa, Antanu Sadhu in 2023, Nabhdrishti Aerospace is supplying its tech to multiple sectors like power, aviation and drones. 

Its core technology centres around a single-engine core architecture that can be adapted for multiple applications. Its first engine, the ND 400 (400N thrust), is built for distributed power generation in industries like oil & gas and manufacturing, range extenders for heavy vehicles, and commercial power solutions for hospitals and malls.

The startup recently secured $3 Mn from Accel and IIMA Ventures.

Moving forward, it plans to deploy the capital to boost the development and testing of its engine prototypes and acquire talent. 

Neosapien: Personal AI Companion

Founded in 2024 by brothers Aryan and Dhananjay Yadav, NeoSapien is a deeptech startup developing AI-powered wearables that integrate seamlessly into daily life. 

The startup’s flagship product, Neo 1, is designed to function as a “second brain” to augment human cognition, offering real-time insights to help users manage information, improve focus, and make better decisions.

Neo 1 is India’s first AI-native wearable that tracks conversations and analyses emotions, offering users the ability to store unlimited memory and enhance their mental capabilities. The product aims to help users unlock their full potential by providing real-time analysis and insights.

Neosapien gained significant attention when it secured INR 80 Lakh from Namita Thapar during its appearance on Shark Tank India in January.

Demand quickly followed, with Batch 1 units selling out fast. Now, Batch 2 is open for early access at INR 9,999, with no subscription fees for the first year. 

While the official launch is still ahead, NeoSapien is gearing up to ship Batch 1 units and inviting users to experience Neo 1 firsthand through a roadshow for Batch 2.

Northstarz.ai: Eliminate Costly Hiring Errors

Human resource departments have been slow to catch up with AI, mostly because existing tools don’t go beyond basic resume screening. 

This is where Bengaluru-based Northtstarz.ai steps in. Founded in 2022 by industry veterans Avinash Singh, Rajiv Ranjan, and Saurabh Sisodia, the startup has built its own AI models trained on 40,000 real-life interviews to help companies hire smarter and faster.

Originally, the founders started with an employability assessment tool for fresh graduates but soon pivoted to focus on recruiters. Now, Northtstarz.ai offers an AI-powered hiring platform that helps HR teams post jobs, generate role-specific questions, and automate interviews. Candidates can take 15-20 minute virtual interviews, and the AI shortlists top talent based on recruiter preferences. It even detects AI-generated responses to keep hiring fair.

With pricing starting at INR 12,500 for 50 interviews, Northtstarz.ai claims it boosts recruiter efficiency by 3X.

Looking ahead, the team plans to onboard 40-50 more paying customers, build an AI tool for corporate performance management, and expand internationally. 

OSSO: Next-Gen Orthopaedics

Sports injuries, including muscle strains, sprains, and lower limb issues, are common among athletes. To address this, Kunal Kishore Dhawan and Avani Shukla founded OSSO (One Stop Solution for Ortho) in 2024. 

The startup is on a mission to simplify orthopaedic care by bringing everything under one roof — whether it’s treatment for sports injuries, physiotherapy, or regenerative medicine. 

It offers a multi-disciplinary approach that combines orthopaedics with physiotherapy to ensure a full-circle recovery process.

At OSSO, every patient gets a personalised treatment plan designed by both an orthopaedic doctor and a physiotherapist. The startup’s thesis is simple — focus on prevention just as much as recovery, using advanced medical technology alongside hands-on care.

With its first clinic now open in Gurugram, OSSO aims to become a comprehensive care facility for sports injuries and orthopaedic health.

Phot.ai: Charging Up Your Brand Recall

With smartphones in every pocket, faster internet, and changing shopping habits, India’s ecommerce market is thriving. But with endless scrolling, brands often struggle to capture customers’ attention, unless their branding is too powerful to be ignored.

That’s where Gurugram-based Phot.AI comes in. Founded in 2023 by Venus Dhuria, Aneesh Rayancha, and Akshit Raja, Phot.AI helps ecommerce brands create eye-catching product images, ad designs, and marketplace listings without the hassle of manual design. 

Using AI, brands can instantly generate visuals for platforms like Amazon, Shopify, and Meta Ads.

With 3 Mn signups globally, the startup offers 25+ AI-powered photo editing tools and an integrated design studio to streamline content creation.

Phot.AI recently raised $2.7 Mn in a seed round led by Info Edge Ventures, with backing from Together Fund, AC Ventures, and over 50 angel investors. Now, the team is on a mission to make digital branding effortless and impactful.

Rezolv: Empowering Lenders With AI-Driven Debt Recovery

After successfully building Kissht, founders Karan Mehta and Sonali Jindal are back in the game with their latest venture, Rezolv, a digital lending startup tackling one of the biggest pain points in the industry — debt recovery.

Launched in October last year, Rezolv uses AI, GenAI, and advanced analytics to streamline the entire debt collection process, from early delinquencies to write-offs, all within a single platform. 

Its product suite includes full lifecycle management, multi-product support, and adaptive workforce models, helping lenders improve recovery rates.

What sets Rezolv apart is that it allows lending companies to create custom workflows without relying on IT teams.

Despite launching its operations in January this year, Rezolv has already onboarded two NBFC clients. In March, it secured $3.5 Mn in seed funding, led by 3one4 Capital, to scale its platform and expand its reach.

SHOEGR: Revive Your Brogues

We know how much you love to keep your shoes spotless, but let’s be honest, constant cleaning is a hassle. That’s why SHOEGR is making shoe care effortless with its range of cleaning, protection, and storage solutions.

Founded in 2021 by Saurabh Gupta, Anuj Sachdeva, and Ankit Roy, ShoEGR helps you take care of your favourite sneakers or formal shoes at home with easy-to-use kits. Instead of struggling with stubborn stains or worn-out soles, you can now keep your footwear in top shape without the extra effort. 

SHOEGR’s product line surpasses traditional shoe care norms. The startup presents cutting-edge cleaning solutions and stylish storage options, demonstrating its unwavering commitment to seamlessly blend practicality with a trendy edge in each product.

Its product line includes a plethora of shoe care products, including cleaning kits for standard, suede shoes as well as shoe laundry kits.

These kits range from INR 549 to just under INR 3,000.

Sisir Radar: Pioneering The New Era Of Radar-Based Monitoring & Intelligence

For industries that need precise and dependable radar systems, especially in tough conditions, traditional radar technology often falls short. 

Understanding the challenge, Tapan Misra, Soumya Misra, and Urmi Bhambhani founded Sisir Radar. The founders are pushing the boundaries of radar technology with their advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). 

The startup’s solutions cater to defence, intelligence, and commercial applications, enabling 24/7, all-weather earth observation.

Sisir Radar’s tech is built for high-performance surveillance, security, and tracking, making it quite useful for military operations, maritime monitoring, and even air traffic control. 

It has already won two IDEX challenges to develop specialised SAR satellites for the Indian Air Force and is in the running for In-SPACe’s INR 1,500 Cr earth observation satellite project.

The startup recently raised $1.5 Mn in seed funding from Shastra VC. 

Visu.ai: Shielding Retail Stores With AI

No stranger to the startup world, TenderCuts’ founder Nishanth Ravichandran has taken yet another entrepreneurial leap. However, this time, he has AI on his platter.   

Inspired by the experiences he had with his meat delivery startup, Ravichandran launched Visu.ai last month. Visu.ai is an AI-driven platform focussed on retail security.

His experience scaling TenderCuts from a single store to over 60 outlets came with its fair share of challenges, and one of the biggest was internal theft and pilferage.

With no effective solutions in the market, he decided to build one himself.

The platform uses advanced computer vision to provide round-the-clock monitoring for retail stores. Its AI-powered tools, Cashier Watch and Customer Watch, integrate seamlessly with CCTV systems to detect suspicious gestures, shoplifting, and internal fraud.

The system doesn’t just record footage, it actively tracks cash handling, product movement, and theft patterns. According to the company, this real-time monitoring can cut down theft by up to 70%.

Headquartered in London, Visu.ai is setting its sights on the US, UAE, and Canadian markets as it looks to redefine retail security.

Zealopia: Companion In Your Mental Health Journey

India’s mental health crisis is bigger than most people realise, with one out of seven individuals struggling with anxiety or depression. 

Yet, stigma, cultural taboos, and limited access to care keep many from seeking help. The hesitation to openly talk about mental health challenges only adds to the problem.

This is what Zealopia is trying to address. Founded by Ajinkya Bhasme in 2023, the startup is building a community to battle mental health issues among Indians. 

Instead of facing struggles alone, users can connect with others dealing with similar challenges through small, anonymous online support groups of 12 people.

But Zealopia doesn’t stop at peer support. The platform makes professional mental health care more affordable, offering access to expert therapists for just INR 1,000 per month. 

It also goes beyond traditional therapy by incorporating alternative healing methods like dance, music, and art therapy so that members can improve both their mental and physical well-being holistically.

Zelio E-Bikes: Affordable EVs For All

With India’s EV movement gaining momentum, Zelio E Mobility is carving out its space with durable and affordable electric vehicles.

Founded in 2021 by Neeraj Arya, the startup manufactures its escooters in its factory located in Hisar and sells its escooters across India through a network of more than 200 dealers.

In March, the company launched Little Gracy, a low-speed, non-RTO electric scooter for younger riders aged 10-18. Available in three variants, the scooter starts at an accessible price of INR 49,500.

Besides Little Gracy, the startup sells a host of escooters for adults as well as electric three-wheelers. Its products come with telescopic suspensions, anti-theft alarms, USB ports, parking gears, and alloy wheels. 

[Edited by: Shishir Parasher]

The post 30 Startups To Watch: Startups That Caught Our Eyes In March 2025 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Haven’t you been drawn into a compelling video while browsing the net – only to realise midway that it was actually an advertisement? But, by then, the well-crafted and incredibly designed content has captured your attention.

The product has jostled into your mindspace. And, the job is done.

In today’s video-first world, short-form content, live streams, and interactive videos dominate our screens, grabbing our attention instantly. Brands have long shifted from static, text-heavy ads to dynamic video ads. The move aligned perfectly with the smartphone-armed, billion-plus Indian consumers.

A shift to video ads wasn’t enough to create top-of-the-mind recall in a discerning consumer class that relies heavily on personalisation. But, delivering true personalisation isn’t simple. It requires a robust customer engagement platform that gathers data, analyses preferences, and orchestrates tailored interactions across multiple touchpoints.

But personalisation is a double-edged sword. Get it right, it enhances engagement. When you get it wrong, it feels intrusive. Many people have experienced the eerie feeling of seeing an ad that’s too relevant. Sometimes it’s convenient and, at times, it’s unsettling.

Brands strike a fine balance by creating multiple ad variations tailored to varied audiences. Achieving this at scale was, however, challenging with no truly scalable, automated approach from agencies, until GenAI changed it all. That’s where Hypergro comes in.

Bengaluru-based Hypergro automates video generation, optimises performance campaigns, and engages leads through AI-powered sales agents. A seamless integration of various digital cues helps create hyper-personalised marketing strategies.

Hyper-personalised content rule the online video space, which is India’s fastest-growing digital ad format, claiming a 28% market share at Rs 13,756 crore, according to the e4m Dentsu 2025 report. With an impressive growth rate of 27.6%, it is poised to capture 30% of the market by the end of 2025, when the online video ad market is projected to reach INR 59,200 Cr.

The Hypergro Backstory

Ads that sell, made by AI – that’s how Hypergro introduces itself on the landing page of its website. Rituraj Biswas and Neha Soman created Hypergro in 2022 to use AI to generate video ads instantly from product details. “Our AI tools write the script, create visuals, edit the content, add captions, and deliver a ready-to-publish ad in minutes,” said Biswas.

Before rolling out Hypergro, Biswas worked with short video platform ShareChat, which gave him an exposure to hyper-personalisation. “In the world of reels and short videos, no two feeds are the same – your recommendations differ from mine. Ads should follow the same principle,” he said.

A beauty brand, he explained, needs to market the same product differently to various customers. Some may prefer organic, skin-friendly ingredients, while others may look for budget-friendly options. A luxury-focused ad cannot entice and engage a budget-conscious user and, it’s the other way round, too. “That’s where Hypergro stands. We build a powerful content engine that generates high-quality, hyper-personalised video ads in multiple languages with tailored messaging within a short turnaround time.”

Evolving In Sync With GenAI

Generative AI was taking baby steps when Hypergro was born. The founders designed the platform to enable UGC creators to produce content faster and in a more incentivised manner. Soon they realised that, as non-creators, they had some misconceptions.

“We assumed that content creators – whether influencers or professionals – would naturally excel at every aspect of content production. However, we discovered that most creators had strengths in specific areas – some were great at scriptwriting, others excelled in editing, and some were skilled at shooting but struggled with other aspects,” Biswas said.

The founders explore a solution to streamline the entire process, starting with scriptwriting. ChatGPT 3.5 came up around this time and made a significant leap forward. Hypergro integrated AI into its platform to generate script ideas for creators.

Over the next year, AI models evolved rapidly. By late 2024, image-generation models had improved significantly, although they were yet to fully replace human creators. To enhance the content creation process, they introduced features like visual storylines and mood boards, helping brands and creators visualise how their ads would look.

“By December 2024, our AI-generated video outputs reached a decent quality level,” he added. The startup leveraged these advancements to integrate AI-powered B-rolls and automated video editing tools, which made content production significantly easier without requiring a full-fledged editing team. These AI-driven solutions streamlined workflows and reduced production costs.

Content creation still required human involvement, which limited the scope of reducing the costs. As brands came under financial pressure with rising competition, they sought higher-quality production at a fraction of the cost – sometimes as low as 20% of the traditional budget.

In the past four months, AI has grown 10 times, according to Biswas. “Advancements made open-source and closed-source AI models so powerful that we were able to replace or enhance many aspects of content production. Brands now had the option to choose between human creators supported by AI-powered tools or entirely AI-generated content. Towards the end of 2024, we launched AI avatars, allowing brands to feature creators in their ads without requiring them to be physically present for shoots. Additionally, fully AI-generated, high-quality ads became possible.”

Inside Hypergro’s Core Offerings

Hypergro is building a full-stack AI-powered short video marketing platform that empowers brands with deep targeting, rapid content generation, and automated campaign optimisation – all tuned to real-time consumer sentiment and hyper-local insights.

At the core lies a proprietary targeting algorithm optimised for the Indian market. It helps brands dynamically discover their ideal audience cohorts, down to district or PIN code level, based on live trends (like IPL), consumer behaviour, and product affinity.

Once audiences are mapped, the AI auto-generates video content tailored to each cohort using a combination of influencer avatars, cinematic ad styles, and even cartoonish storytelling. In the pre-production level, AI recommends ideas based on trending data, brand input, and audience behaviour, suggesting which content should be creator-led, which feature real influencers sharing authentic endorsements, or human-style videos that mimic the format using actors or AI for scalable, brand-controlled messaging.

When the content enters production, proprietary modules select the best generative models for different shot types such as cinematic, product-heavy, or human-focused, to build video content at scale. The post-production is about auto-translation and message tweaking across multiple languages, generating hundreds of ad variants (15 base videos × 10 variants = 150 assets).

Once deployed, Hypergro’s GrowthAI tracks ad performance across platforms like Meta, Google, YouTube, and Snapchat, analysing what resonates where and why. It identifies top-performing creatives, allocates more budget to high-ROAS variants, and feeds back insights to optimise future campaigns.

Hypergro closes the loop by deploying voice-based AI agents that follow up with users who abandoned carts or didn’t convert, collecting qualitative insights at scale.

The Hypergro Clientele

The startup claims to have served over 150 brands to date, while 50 more are actively working with it in parallel.

“Until the end of last year, our focus was primarily on perfecting the product. It’s only this year, in fact, this quarter, we have really started thinking about scaling revenue and expanding our client base. Despite that, we receive close to 500 to 800 unique inquiries every month,” Biswas said.

Hypergro typically works with brands that are in their growth stage. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands from sectors such as beauty and healthcare form a major chunk of its clientele, especially those focused on increasing their return on ad spend.

“The other key segment we cater to is apps, whether it’s gaming apps or consumer apps, where the objective is usually to reduce cost per install or improve user retention,” Soman said.

The Way Forward For Hypergro

Hypergro has just raised INR 7 Cr in a pre-Series A funding round led by Eternal Capital, with investors such as Silver Needle Ventures, VCats, and Astir Ventures chipping in, media reports said. The funding aims to accelerate Hypergro’s AI innovation and global expansion.

The startup has found great traction in the medical space. It is currently working with Apollo and a number of smaller clinics and healthtech startups and plans to invest heavily into building a dedicated vertical around medical services.

“We started by focusing on the Indian market, and for this quarter, we’re doubling down on it. But from the next financial quarter, we plan to go international. As I mentioned earlier, there are already global players like Icon.me and Hedra.com – both direct competitors – and they’re doing really well in the US market. But with AI evolving so rapidly, we know we have to grow aggressively, and global expansion is a key part of that growth strategy,” Biswas said.

The startup is confident of crossing $3 Mn in revenue by the end of the FY26, with potentially higher ARR. In the December 2024 quarter, it doubled the revenue over the previous quarter. The company had so far concentrated most of its efforts on building the product. As it has stepped up focus on scaling, it aims at five to 10 times annual growth.

Biswas said the company hasn’t officially disclosed its financials for FY25 yet. It expects to close the year at just under INR 3 Cr, raising its topline from INR 50 lakh in FY24. “This growth will drive us to scale the business in future,” the founder said.

[Edited by Kumar Chatterjee]

The post Inside Hypergro’s AI Play For Making Hyper-Personalised Video Ads appeared first on Inc42 Media.

If there is one area that GenAI has prominently impacted, it is customer experience and service. Harnessing the power of the generative capability of the large language models (LLMs), enterprises globally have onboarded AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents in droves.

And it is easy to see why. Well, AI chatbots can resolve tickets raised by customers 18% faster with a success rate of 71%. This simply means increased customer satisfaction and better conversion rates. 

However, while many companies are upgrading their customer care centres (contact centres), fears of job losses loom large, along with sub-par customer satisfaction. 

Understandably, there are several things that AI still cannot do. Besides, in a country like India, multiple languages remain a major hurdle for LLMs. As a result, a large number of tickets (complaints) still end up at the employee desk.

Many companies are now realising that they need to equip humans with smart AI agents to make their respective customer support and sales generation processes more efficient.

Bengaluru-based Observe.AI, too, is on a mission to automate complex tasks for human agents and make a difference in the way companies handle customer support.  

Founded in 2017, Observe.AI has enabled more than 350 enterprises to make their contact centres more efficient through its AI stack.

The startup was incorporated by Swapnil Jain, Akash Singh and Sharath Keshava Narayana. In 2018, Jithendra Vepa joined as the CTO and later became a cofounder. Singh and Narayana exited the company in 2022.

The Genesis Of Observe.AI

Speaking with Inc42, Jain, a former technical team lead at Twitter (now X), stated that when AI was still a grey area for many in 2016, he realised that speech technology and deep learning were at an inflexion point.  

“The machines’ ability to understand human speech was advancing rapidly, and I knew there was an opportunity to build something transformative in this space.” 

During this time, voice assistants were in their early days, but a big wave of this technology had already started. Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and a few other assistants were launched between 2010 and 2016. These tools use natural language processing (NLP) and mostly operate on simple command-based interactions.

To understand the application of the technology better, Jain spent six months in a contact centre based in the Philippines with hundreds of agents. Here, he realised that dedicated agents and QA analysts worked hard but were constrained by manual and time-consuming processes.

However, Vepa was involved in the research and development (R&D) of speech technology after his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. He was building text-to-speech systems at Samsung. 

Jain met Vepa about a year after starting the company. Back then, he was looking for an expert who could help him build the core technology and market for Observe.AI’s quality assurance (QA) products for contact centres. 

Initially onboarded as the chief scientist at Observe.AI, Vepa soon became the cofounder and CTO of the company.

With a gamut of challenges to be tackled across communication channels, including chat and email, the founders picked the hard problem first – voice. This led to the development of a conversational intelligence platform with a range of applications.

Since launching its first product, which focussed on analytics and manual QA support for contact centres, in 2019, the company has expanded its suite to build multiple products to improve contact centre performance with real-time insights, analysis, summarisation, and more. Its tech stack comprises tools such as Knowledge AI, Summarization AI, Auto Coaching, and Auto QA, among others.

Helped by the demand boom for speech and voice technologies during the pandemic, Observe.AI claims that its business grew more than 2X. It also acquired its first large customer, National Debt Relief, in 2020.

By then, Observe AI had already raised more than $30 Mn from Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and Scale Venture Partners. In 2020, it raised $54 Mn from Menlo Ventures. So far, the startup has raised $214 Mn in total funding. It is also backed by SoftBank.

While the founders did not reveal the revenue or growth multiples, the startup counts the likes of Pearson, Cox Automotive, Accolade, and DailyPay among its top customers. Largely catering to US customers across healthcare, BFSI, travel, and homecare sectors, Observe.AI has two customers in India. Besides, a majority of its tech team is based in the country.

What’s At The Core Of Observe.AI’s Tech

Today, Observe.AI’s technology supports enterprises with quality assurance, coaching and agent assistance. Besides, it provides valuable raw data to help businesses enhance their overall processes.

The startup claims to have delivered its enterprise clients with up to 60% efficiency gains and more than 75% reduction in quality evaluation time.

“We built our technology on genuine observation, seeing the human experience firsthand, then creating AI solutions that address real needs rather than theoretical problems,” said Jain.

When Observe.AI started building products for contact centres, especially for customer service, it recognised three areas that could be targeted. 

First, there was a necessity to analyse the conversations between agents and customers for compliance and quality. This analysis was devised to improve the agent performance for a better customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and to see more sales. 

The second area of focus was to help agents fetch information more effectively from large documents so that customer and agent conversations could be more efficient and shorter. With these in place, Observe.AI decided to bring in automation with voice agents, which it recently launched by leveraging the capabilities of GenAI and LLMs.

When Observe.AI began its journey, GenAI had yet to create waves. In its initial days, the startup began working with transformer models and building its robust data pipeline. 

“AI is in our DNA. From day one, Observe.AI started building strong foundations, whether it was model training or building the core technology or data pipeline. With the advent of GenAI, we have been quick to adapt,” the CTO said. 

There are two aspects to its core technology — speech-to-text, which involves automatic speech recognition, and LLMs that can then do reasoning and analyse the text. The company claims that its LLM is built on 40 Bn parameters.

Both of its core models, including the LLM, are built in-house. However, these models are not foundational. They are built on top of open-source foundational models and trained on domain-specific data.

“While we built these technologies, the only missing piece was a text-to-speech model, which communicates back again in a human-like speech quality. That’s where the recent acquisition of Dubdub.ai came into the picture. Now we have all these three technologies to build a strong voice AI platform,” said Vepa.

Observe.AI acquired Dubdub.ai for an undisclosed amount in March to tap into its text-to-speech technology, which works in over 50 languages, including a few Indic languages and enables users to produce audio output in over 20 voices, capturing diverse age groups, genders, along with a spectrum of emotions, such as angry, excited, and sad.

Observe.AI’s Next Leap

Although India makes up a small part of its current customer base, Vepa says the company plans to develop more products for this market. However, the major barrier to this is India’s language diversity.

Therefore, in spite of spending heavily on building such capabilities, Observe.AI is more interested in acquiring companies with expertise in Indic languages. The acquisition of Dubdub was one such step.

Meanwhile, competition is growing in the conversational AI space. In India, startups like CoRover and Gnani.ai have built their in-house models to bolster speech-to-text and text-to-speech models. Startups like NoBroker, Zomato, and OfBusiness, too, have also launched their AI agents to unclog customer-end bottlenecks.

Globally, Amazon and many others have also built such capabilities. However, Vepa believes that Observe.AI will continue to stand out because a majority in the industry are struggling with high latency and hallucinations.

According to Vepa, the biggest issue with today’s voicebots is endpoint detection. When two humans speak, one person knows when to start speaking after the other person stops. “But machines do not understand this. AI must learn when to speak after a human stops speaking — neither can it pause for too long nor should it barge in during a conversation

“Besides, we still need to figure out which conversations can be handled by the machine. Therefore, co-existence is the only way forward for now,” Vepa added.

He also believes that most emerging startups in the conversational AI space will need time to achieve the level of predictability, reliability, and consistency demanded by enterprise-grade services.

As a result, the founders see a huge market. In 2025, Observe.AI aims to double down on its voice AI agents so that enterprises can see better sales conversion and CSAT with human and AI agent collaborations. 

Besides, it also wants to acquire some large US businesses with high-volume contact centre needs. From here, it would be interesting to see how Observe.AI’s capabilities give it an edge over industry giants in the conversational AI space.

[Edited By Shishir Parasher]

The post How Observe.AI Is Redefining The Future Of Contact Centres appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Very few startups can withstand revenue fluctuations for nearly a decade, and even fewer can hope for a comeback after teetering on the edge amid the pandemic. Aisle, a high-intent dating app, faced a similar hurdle until it was acquired in March 2022 by the technology holding company Info Edge India, which operates platforms such as Naukri, Jeevansathi, 99acres and Shiksha.

But first things first. Launched in 2014 by Able Joseph and Sarath Nair, the app was positioned between Tinder, Bumble or Hinge-like casual dating platforms and online matrimonial services like Shaadi, BharatMatrimony or Jeevansathi.com. The subscription service promised to bridge the two formats — focussing more on all-round compatibility rather than visual cues and ensuring that users looking for serious relationships could find suitable matches.

Additionally, it bucked the conventional wisdom of constant engagement and factored in user churn into its growth outlook, a natural progression when a member meets someone special and exits the platform.      

The Bengaluru-based startup launched several vernacular dating sites and apps, considering how a ‘modern and young India’ would want to pursue love and relationships in a digital-first era. Among these were Arike, the country’s first vernacular dating app for Keralites, Anbe for Tamil users, Neetho for the Telugu populace, Neene (for Kannada speakers) and a few other apps/sites.

Before its acquisition, the startup raised $1.15 Mn across four rounds from a clutch of investors such as Titan Capital, LetsVenture, ah! Ventures and White Unicorn Ventures. Essentially, it was trying to do everything right to drive its business (more on its exclusive features later).

Meanwhile, casual dating apps thrived throughout the pandemic or earlier due to their novelty and convenience. They became immensely popular and Wall Street’s darlings, as nothing more was required than swiping a finger across a smartphone. In 2022, India emerged as the fifth fastest-growing market for dating app spending, with a $31 Mn rise in user expenditure compared to the previous year.

According to Grand View Research, the country’s online dating app market is projected to reach $1.01 Bn by 2030 from $547.9 Mn in 2023, at a 9.2% CAGR. Globally, the revenue forecast is $14.4 Bn.

Despite a growing market for digital dating services, Aisle struggled to achieve profitability. In FY22 (ended on March 31, 2022), the startup generated operating revenue of INR 14.11 Cr but reported a loss of INR 6.25 Cr. The previous year (FY21) saw revenue of INR 7.57 Cr, with a narrower loss of INR 29 Lakh. In fact, FY20 was the only exception, when Aisle posted a modest profit of INR 15 Lakh on revenue of INR 7.61 Cr. Before that, it recorded losses for five consecutive years since FY15. 

The venture was at a critical crossroads as it faced mounting challenges. Should it press forward and take a real shot at building Aisle as one of the largest dating companies? Or should it scale back and rethink the future? As Info Edge stepped in and acquired a 76% stake in Aisle for INR 91 Cr, the startup could push ahead.

Why Info Edge Joined The Aisle Party

An early backer of prominent startups such as Zomato and PolicyBazaar (the foodtech giant and the parent firm of the insurance aggregator are now publicly traded), Info Edge has always been eager to invest in new and differentiated ventures. After acquiring a majority stake in Aisle, it infused an additional INR 30 Cr in March 2025 through its matrimonial portal, Jeevansathi.com. As a result, its total investment in the step-down subsidiary has reached INR 121 Cr. Its shareholding has risen to 92.83% on a fully converted and diluted basis, up from 89.17%.

This strategic push reflects Info Edge’s ambition to dominate India’s up-and-coming online dating market.

“The latest round will help Aisle expand its product offerings and address its working capital requirements. It will further strengthen our offerings in the matchmaking space by addressing the needs of individuals across age groups and backgrounds seeking meaningful connections,” the company said.

An Info Edge spokesperson, requesting anonymity, told Inc42 that the firm gradually increased its stake in Aisle due to the app’s strong user engagement and retention rates among the 25+ age group — a segment often overlooked by global dating platforms.

While many dating platforms grapple with user retention and monetisation challenges, Info Edge has seen distinct value in Aisle’s approach. “Its clear positioning as a ‘high-intent’ dating app has carved a niche among those seeking serious relationships. This aligns well with our understanding of the Indian market, where the emphasis is often on long-term commitment,” the spokesperson said.

“The app’s regional focus has also been a growth driver — especially Arike, which caters to Malayali people. Its success within the country and among the NRIs underscores the potential for culturally curated relationship platforms. This vernacular strategy is critical to our investment thesis in this space.”

Aisle’s Playbook For A Turnaround Amid Stagnation 

With the pandemic gone and barriers against real-life mingling disappearing, will online dating continue to thrive as it did a couple of years ago? A 2023 survey by Pew Research Center revealed that even in the US — the biggest market globally — just 30% of the adults ever used a dating site/app, and only 1% of partnered adults met their current significant other via that route. (For those under 30, it happened to be 50%.) 

According to global estimates, dating app installations and sessions also saw a 13% year-over-year drop from January 2023 to December 2024. International giants like Tinder and OkCupid also witnessed a 20-25% decline in monthly active users between October 2022 and September 2023, indicating slowing growth. Closer home, the stagnation also posed persistent challenges without actual disruptions, and many companies failed to revamp their appeal.

An industry insider terms it a generational shift, pointing out that most millennials are married by now and have outgrown these apps. Young people (read Gen Z) are still keen to try it, but those with less disposable incomes are not willing to pay high subscription fees even for premium features. These daters are increasingly looking to free and popular platforms like Instagram or Snapchat for direct messaging. Conversely, the bulk of the revenue earned by dating apps comes from subscriptions and only a small percentage from digital advertising. Add to that the growing customer acquisition cost and life is anything but rosy for these businesses.   

When Aisle started operating under Info Edge, it underwent a leadership shakeup, paving the path for spinning things around. As confirmed in his LinkedIn post, Founder Able Joseph officially stepped down a year ago. In February 2025, Chandni Gaglani was appointed the new head to lead the company into its next phase of growth.

An alumnus of the Indian School of Business (ISB), she spent more than a decade at Flipkart, Myntra and Udaan, thriving in various leadership roles.

Aisle has developed and deployed several strategies to deepen its competitive advantage post-acquisition. According to Gaglani, the platform now enjoys greater access to Info Edge’s shared resources. Integrating core functions like HR, finance and technology into the startup’s central teams has helped Aisle streamline operations, focus more on innovations and push for market expansion instead of merely coping with day-to-day operational challenges.

Info Edge has invested heavily in Aisle’s technology and product portfolio to improve its performance and ensure a more engaging user experience. According to the spokesperson mentioned earlier, the platform has significantly ramped up its marketing efforts through social media and content-driven campaigns to boost brand visibility and attract a bigger audience.

Aisle’s most significant innovation in this phase is Aisle Experiences, an invite-only programme officially launched in August 2024. It focusses on building a quality-driven community and creating offline events that cater to shared interests, such as wine-and-cheese nights, jam sessions and other interest-based meetups. The goal is to foster genuine connections in a relaxed, safe environment rather than routine swiping or indiscriminate user acquisition.

“Data shows that most meaningful matches occur within common interest groups. Aisle Experiences aims to bring people together based on that insight,” said Gaglani. “When fully rolled out, this initiative will refine the Aisle community through clear brand messaging, data-driven profiling and exclusive invite-only events. These will support its positioning as a premium, intention-driven dating platform.”

Aisle also provides greater transparency by displaying the number of interactions a match had in the past three days. Premium members can benefit from advanced profile filters and photo verification. Recognising the importance of attracting women users, it has also introduced features designed to enhance their experience. Private Mode, for instance, allows women to browse profiles discreetly until they choose to engage. Again, only women can initiate chats after a mutual match to curb unsolicited messages.

To further strengthen its branding, Aisle is experimenting with customised, cohort-based pricing — tailored subscription plans to cater to different users. A recent pilot saw subscription costs reduced by more than 50%, with varying responses across markets. “NRIs responded positively to the price drop, while urban Indians on iOS were more receptive than their Android counterparts. We are moving towards personalised subscription plans based on app usage to make profile-matching more accessible and effective across demographics,” said Gaglani.

Currently, Aisle charges INR 1,500 as a monthly subscription fee.

Historically, Aisle has maintained a lean tech infrastructure, but it is now transitioning to a microservices model that leverages Info Edge’s technological resources. While AI integration is still early, Aisle Network is exploring AI-driven innovations to improve safety, mitigate cybercrime risks and automate profile matching for better quality and match volume.

“Ahead of broader AI integration, we are focussing on AI-led verification, including live checks to detect image-based spoofing,” said Gaglani. “We also plan to introduce AI-powered tools to encourage more meaningful interactions, moving beyond generic conversations.

A Look At Aisle’s Numbers Post Info Edge Acquisition 

Like many of its peers, Aisle struggled to generate substantial revenue in its early years. It failed to surpass INR 1 Cr in the first three years and hit the profit button just once in FY20. But it slipped back in the red and did not see a recovery, although its revenue crept up in FY22. 

The turning point came after the Info Edge acquisition. In FY23, its operating revenue jumped by 123% YoY to reach INR 31.46 Cr. Although losses widened during this period due to increased investments and expansion, its revenue rose 10.6% to INR 34.80 Cr in FY24. Overall, Aisle’s operating revenue soared by nearly 146% in two years. The numbers for FY25 are not out yet, but the company managed to reduce its cash burn by 42% and inched closer to profitability, according to Gaglani. 

User growth across its key apps also remains strong. Over the past two years, Aisle has maintained a steady stream of 1 Mn monthly active users. Within Aisle’s portfolio, the flagship app contributes 50% of revenue and user base, with regional apps like Arike, Anbe and Neetho accounting for the rest, noted Gaglani. The company claims an overall user base of 16 Mn and counting.

In another sign of surefire growth, Aisle has expanded its team from 20 to 49, setting up new divisions and looking at more investments for product and leadership development to fuel continued expansion.

However, Gaglani stresses upholding the core mission. “Globally, dating apps lean towards the hookup culture, but Aisle has always set itself apart. It avoids swipe-based features and encourages deeper engagement,” she said. “More importantly, its apps were primarily created for individuals aged 27-35. Right now, we are seeing an influx of Gen Z users. Nevertheless, our core mission remains unchanged, although we filter our target audience more effectively.”

Aisle’s Roadmap For Scaling Up

Aisle aims to redefine the dating landscape in India, both qualitatively and through tech power. Understandably, AI will be the next big bet for profile matching, along with hyperlocal engagement and experiential dating. Although things are still at an early stage, the company is now refining these strategies to disrupt the industry and chart a course for sustainable expansion.

At the core of its growth strategy lie user engagement, retention drive and moving beyond digital matches to foster community-driven connections.

On the monetisation front, Aisle is optimising its investments instead of dramatically increasing them. The company is implementing a city-specific, hyperlocal strategy to deepen its presence in key markets. This tailored approach ensures that each platform within the Aisle Network delivers a unique value proposition, minimising overlap and maximising user value. In the current financial year, Aisle projects a 70-80% YoY revenue growth from its key apps, driven by deeper segmentation, regional customisation and differentiated offerings across multiple dating platforms.

For Gaglani and her team, going granular and regional matters most as key vernacular apps under the Aisle umbrella have shown strong performance, with its key apps recording 45% YoY growth in FY25. As she noted, India’s dating market is highly diverse, featuring distinct regional behaviours that defy global patterns. Although urban areas may resemble metro trends or even the West, where typical user acquisition metrics look promising on spreadsheets, smaller cities in tier II and III regions offer different values, habits and relationship perspectives. Hence, companies like Aisle must adopt a tailored approach, not a one-size-fits-all model.  

Given the recent capital infusion, it is evident that Info Edge remains committed to these growth strategies for the long term. The internet behemoth considers these platforms complementary to its matrimony service, Jeevansathi. Therefore, it aims to cultivate a suite of offerings that meet diverse user requirements across dating, relationships and matchmaking.

“Over time, Info Edge will invest in these [vernacular] platforms to build a varied portfolio that serves different audiences and relationship goals,” the spokesperson told Inc42. 

Meanwhile, Aisle must prove its mettle, personalise its services, and offer flexibility to all user groups to ensure that the demand for meaningful connections continues to grow in India and around the globe. After all, nearly 50% of Indian men and women never got married, and the number is rising, throwing open a massive market for the likes of Aisle.   

[Edited By Sanghamitra Mandal]

The post The Info Edge Effect: How Dating App Aisle’s Revenue Soared 146% After Acquisition appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In large enterprises, employees often struggle with internal workflows — be it tech glitches, onboarding hiccups, task delays, or a lack of timely support. These seemingly small problems can snowball into lost time and reduced productivity.

This is where there’s a growing need for smart, automated solutions that can take care of critical internal tasks quickly, efficiently and with minimal human involvement.

Founded in 2022 by Vijay Rayapati, Kiran Darisi and Parsuram Vijayasankar, Atomicwork is addressing this pain point of organisations by building AI-powered tools for enterprises. With its solutions, Atomicwork automates and streamlines internal workflows, reduces dependency on multiple platforms, and helps employees solve problems instantly.

Atomicwork’s endeavour is in sync with today’s enterprise needs — the ones related to exploring AI products, especially autonomous AI agents, to automate internal workflows like tech support, onboarding, task management, and more. 

According to a report, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028. Besides, at least 15% of daily work decisions would be made autonomously through agentic AI.

Atomicwork aims to capture a large portion of this growing market with its voice and vision AI agents for enterprise IT teams. 

Since its inception, it has raised $40 Mn to fund its technology development, hiring, and global customer acquisition. It is backed by marquee investors, including OpenAI-backed Khosla Ventures, Blume Ventures, Z47, and Peak XV.

Laying The First Bricks Of Atomicwork

While Rayapati is a second-time entrepreneur, who sold his previous startup Minjar to Nutanix in 2018, Darisi and Vijayasankar were part of the founding team at Freshworks. 

Having previously built software for developers and small and medium businesses, the trio joined hands to develop solutions that can help enterprises solve complex workflow challenges. This led to the creation of Atomicwork.

After its inception in 2022, the founders spent a year building a base platform. During this time, they were experimenting with AI and working on customer acquisition plans. In 2024, Atomicwork started full-fledged deployment of its platform with large enterprises.

“In any business, people use various tools and follow set processes to deliver a product or service. But along the way, they often face issues — usually due to lack of knowledge, insufficient training, or simply not reading the documentation. That’s where automation can step in and make a real difference,” the founders said.

Rayapati said Atomicwork solves this problem end-to-end for enterprises so that their businesses can operate much faster and they are not required to integrate 10 different tools to get basic help.

The startup has built an Agentic AI platform, Atom, which can be integrated with platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, Google Drive, and WordPress to ensure end-to-end problem-solving for enterprises and their employees.

As per Rayapati, Atomicwork is solely focussed on internal workflow challenges at enterprises because they are harder to solve than external and customer-facing issues.

Its Agentic AI platform includes tools such as AI Agents, AI Copilot, AI Skills, AI Search, AI Assistant, and AI Service Desk.

Though the founder did not reveal its total customer base, it serves some of the top global organisations across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and education. Some of its top customers include Zuora, Pepper Money, and AMMEX.

Atomicwork’s Fusion Of AI Models

Atomicwork hasn’t built any proprietary large language models (LLMs). It rather does context engineering and distillation of the already available models to build small language models (SMLs) that can decide on the action based on specific use cases.

For instance, its AI agent with video capabilities is a combination of Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT models. Similarly, for chat support use cases, it has used a combination of Llama and OpenAI models. Atomicwork also uses Anthropic and Cohere for a few other use cases.

“We are building what people typically call, in technical language, an ensemble AI architecture, which is a fusion of AI models,” explained Rayapati.

The startup has developed its own proprietary datasets over the years, which it uses to train its AI models. 

The founder clarified that Atomicwork doesn’t do fine-tuning of models but rather prefers distillation, which is more cost-effective as GenAI models are changing almost every week.

As per a Google blog, fine-tuned models are usually better in predictions than the foundation LLMs, but they contain the same number of parameters as the foundation LLM. On the other hand, distillation creates a smaller version of an LLM, and the distilled LLM predicts much faster with fewer computational and environmental resources compared to the full LLM.

Atomicwork doesn’t customise its products and tools for every enterprise. While companies can choose to customise a bit as per their requirements, the platform doesn’t need a full customisation that SaaS products traditionally required.

It charges an enterprise with 1,000 employees an average amount of $100,000 per year. The startup began generating revenue in 2024. It has, however, refrained from sharing its earnings.

Forging Ahead Amid Global Competition

Going ahead, the founders want to create the next platform of choice for CIOs. They also want to expand their customer base from a few dozen customers right now to hundreds of customers soon. 

“We want to achieve our first $100 Mn revenue goal as soon as possible,” Rayapati said.

However, the competition is getting tougher. While the startup has its eye on beating ServiceNow, a cloud-based platform that helps businesses automate and manage workflows across various departments, the enterprise AI market is slowly seeing the emergence of many companies, big and small.

Even IT giants like Wipro, TCS and Amazon have built their own platforms. However, Rayapati believes that service companies can never become product companies even with AI.

Moreover, as AI adoption grows among Indian enterprises, Atomicwork sees a strong opportunity in the market. According to the founder, no one in India is currently building true enterprise-grade SaaS products.

“In India, Darwinbox is trying to build a true enterprise SaaS on the HR side, like we do for IT teams. I don’t think anybody else in the country is really targeting the global market building for the enterprises,” said Rayapati, urging Indian founders to target sectors dominated by legacy players.

“Go create AI native and AI at core software platforms. I think a massive opportunity is there, and that is how we create these billion-dollar revenue and tens of billions of dollars market cap companies. If you create simple use cases and applications… that kind of SaaS is dead,” Rayapati added.

As of now, while Atomicwork’s vision to become a CIO’s go-to platform sounds compelling, the path ahead is anything but straightforward. Enterprise software is a tough game. The challenge gets even steeper when you’re going up against global giants that have been around for decades. Amid this, can Atomicwork take on the big guns?  

[Edited By Shishir Parasher]

The post How Atomicwork Plans To Rewire Enterprise IT With Agentic AI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“It’s a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.” That was American baseball icon and manager Pete Rose. On the other face of the planet, the square is hit when it comes to the platter of the quintessential gourmet Indian. The luscious fantasies of the discerning Indian foodie have withered away over the years to make space for a square meal – to stay fit, not just on track and field, but also in everyday life.  

It’s not just the millennials or the GenZ, often tagged fitness freaks, staying fit has slowly become a mindset for an expanding middle class, which is likely to reach 1 Bn in strength by the time India turns 100 in 2047. Marked within an annual household income bracket of INR 5 Lakh to INR 30 Lakh, the upwardly mobile middle class – defined as the biggest consumer class in the $4.3 Tn Indian economy – has fostered the rise of a $1.79 Bn market for sports nutrition products and set it on course to reach $3.31 Bn by 2033. 

Sports nutrition products that include supplements, sports drinks, energy bars, and protein powders were primarily consumed by professional athletes and bodybuilders. In fact, the concept of supplements and scientifically formulated nutrition remained niche until the early 2000s, when the shift in mindset to stay fit pushed an increasing number of people to buy gym memberships and participate in sporting events.

What further encouraged the Indian consumer was the exposure to international fitness trends and endorsements from global athletes. All these catalysed the demand for sports nutrition products. 

As international brands like Optimum Nutrition (ON) and GNC (General Nutrition Centers) started gaining traction in Indian markets, HealthKart launched MuscleBlaze in 2012, offering locally manufactured supplements at competitive prices. Yet, the segment remained largely unorganised. 

“Around 2011-12, counterfeit, unregistered, and unapproved products and misleading labels were widespread in the market. This made it extremely difficult for consumers to identify genuine products,” said first-time entrepreneur Shreyans Jain.

The market was dominated by international brands, with very few reliable Indian alternatives. On top of this, high import costs made these supplements expensive, often costing INR 5,000 to INR 8,000 a month. “What made it worse was that even after spending so much, most of these products were either fake or unregulated.”

The turning point came around 2017-18, when the market saw a sharp spurt in sports nutrition products. Shreyans positioned his brainchild Nutrabay at this juncture as a marketplace designed to ensure end-to-end control over the brands and products offered to consumers.

Nearly eight years on, Nutrabay reported an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of INR 100 Cr reached in FY24. The brand also runs an eponymous private label offering clean products that are natural, minimally processed, transparent and without any artificial ingredient, and lab-tested supplements at competitive prices, targeting middle class consumers in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. 

Nutrabay’s total revenue grew over 45% from INR 68 Cr in FY20 to INR 99 Cr in FY24. The startup turned profitable in FY24 with a net profit of INR 1.22 Cr, making a sharp turnaround from an INR 5.80 Lakh loss a year back. In the one year to FY24, its EBITDA too surged nearly four-fold, reaching INR 2.26 Cr.

Nutrabay’s private label offers more than 200 SKUs and has a customer base of over 1.5 Mn, growing rapidly at 80% on-year in FY24. Its marketplace has over 150 brands and more than 4,000 SKUs, including Superfyou, Gladful, Setu, MuscleTech, and Athlab. It delivers over 3 Mn orders a month. Observing the potential in the market, investors like RPSG Capital Ventures and Kotak Alternate Asset Managers parked over $5 Mn in the startup last year.

Setting A Brand On Speed Track To INR 100 Cr Turnover 

The birth of Nutrabay traces back to Shreyans’s college days when he was doing computer engineering. As a regular gym-goer and fitness enthusiast, he would consume a lot of supplements. “It was difficult for a college student to afford those expensive, imported brands,” he said. To address this pain point, Shreyans made his first attempt in 2012 by becoming a distributor and reseller of some supplement brands. “It didn’t, however, give me control over marketplace logistics and product authenticity.”

A couple of years later, in 2015, an ASSOCHAM study highlighted that approximately 60-70% of dietary supplements sold in India were fake, counterfeit, unregistered, or unapproved. Shreyans had identified these issues well before this study was published. 

The rise in ecommerce around 2016 unlocked an open field for him to thrash out a solution. He found that though online shopping was booming, the supplement options available weren’t reliable. Despite platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, trust deficit ran high in the market.

“Consumers typically had two types of online options: vertical marketplaces focussed on health and supplements, or horizontal marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart. The latter had only just started building their supplement categories, and it wasn’t a key focus for them,” Shreyans said. “But anyone could sign up as a seller and start selling products – even if they weren’t authorised resellers. That led to highly mixed consumer experiences, with many receiving fake or expired products.” 

After Shreyans reached out to his cousin Sharad, who was dealing in vitamin-related products in the offline space and had some experience selling on online platforms, they spent 4–5 months researching the market and studying the consumer. Later, they roped in cousin Divay to launch Nutrabay as a marketplace. They tied up directly with brands, became authorised retailers, and made a conscious decision not to onboard any third-party sellers. The startup was officially founded in January 2017.

Nutrabay was rolled out with whey protein and later expanded to sports nutrition products, vitamins and supplements, health foods and drinks, and even workout equipment.

In India, where the gym and training market is pegged at $598.86 Mn and projected to average an annual growth rate of 4.86% till 2030, orders started pouring in on Nutrabay within weeks. The company reached a revenue of INR 2.4 Cr in the first year and reached INR 48.3 Cr in FY19.

“The next logical step for us was to launch our own private label,” Sheyans said. The Nutrabay private label spans across categories such as shaker bottles, whey protein, weight gainers, peanut butter, shilajit, fat burners, and digestive fibres.

Clearing Hurdles Along The Growth Turf 

The biggest challenge for the founders has been building consumer trust and ensuring authenticity. The presence of third-party sellers only made the problem worse.

They also faced major hurdles on the operational and technology fronts. As the brand tried to scale rapidly, the hurdles turned steeper. “Since we were operating on a full inventory model, there were multiple instances where the number of incoming orders exceeded our capacity to fulfill them,” said Shreyans.

They first set up a small fulfillment centre to resolve the issue but it was choked within a few months as volumes surged. It took a while to identify and move to a new facility, around four to five times the previous one. Even this expanded space soon proved insufficient. “The growth was happening at such a rapid pace that we had to relocate once again to a much larger centre. It turned into a continuous process of upgrading infrastructure to keep up with the rising demand,” said the founder.

He added that back in 2019, they didn’t have a tech team – everything on the website was built by the founder himself. “As traffic surged, especially during campaigns, the site often crashed because it couldn’t handle the load. Managing scale without proper tech support was one of our early challenges.”

On the operational side, the company built a tightly controlled supply chain by sourcing products directly from brands or official importers, eliminating third-party sellers. “This ensured 100% authenticity – a major concern in the supplements industry.”

Every product today is quality checked for hygiene and damage, packed under video surveillance, and secured using tamper-proof Nutrabay-branded tapes. For their private label, products come with an authenticity sticker featuring a scratch code that customers can verify online. Additionally, its jars are sealed with a neck band and vacuum barrier to prevent tampering during transit.

In terms of R&D, the company follows a hybrid model. While the core research and formulation ideas are developed by its in-house nutritionists, the execution happens collaboratively with 6–7 exclusive manufacturing partners who work closely with them to bring those formulations to life.

On the tech side, after early setbacks, they eventually built a more robust platform with proper tech support to manage the scale more efficiently.

Building Up The Playbook, Mapping The Way Forward

As athletes and fitness enthusiasts increasingly stress on the need for a balanced, science-backed approach to diet to remain physically fit on a global scale, the link between sports performance and nutrition comes to the fore, making sports nutrition all the more important. 

The sports nutrition market in India is on the boil with a host of emerging and seasoned supplement brands vying for a slice of the pie that’s expanding 8.1% every year. Nutrabay operates at the centre of this boom, where new-entrant D2C players like SuperYou and Gladful are taking on several strong brands.

The successful growth stories in the sports nutrition space includes that of health and wellness supplements brand HealthKart which runs MuscleBlaze and HK Vitals. The company saw remarkable growth since its launch in 2011 and surpassed INR 1,000 Cr in revenue in FY24. 

While fast-scaling D2C player Wellbeing Nutrition looks to close FY25 with an INR 140 Cr revenue, ayurvedic nutrition brand Kapiva has crossed the INR 200 Cr mark in FY24.

To achieve their long-term vision of becoming an INR 500 Cr brand in such a competitive market, the Nutrabay founders are clear that they need to double down on their digital presence while simultaneously building a strong omnichannel strategy. According to Shreyans, the INR 100 Cr ARR milestone was reached because of consistent growth, control over product quality and check on operational costs. By the time they reached this mark, Nutrabay had laid out a solid foundation for expansion, he said. 

“Today, we have over 1.5 Mn customers, with 15,000 to 20,000 people joining us every month. Our private label has seen an 80% growth over the last year, we have delivered over 3 Mn monthly orders across channels, and our average order value stands at INR 2,000.” 

Nutrabay aims for a 15-20 Minute delivery across the country using quick commerce or its own D2C channel powered by decentralised fulfillment centres. The startup expanded to the quick commerce space by launching on Zepto two months ago. It now plans to be present across all major quick commerce platforms. 

“The goal is to aggressively scale this channel, offering faster delivery and a superior customer experience. A key milestone for 2025 is to go live across all major Indian cities on every leading quick commerce platform. These combined efforts are expected to boost customer trust, expand the reach, and accelerate growth,” added the founder.

For its omnichannel play, Nutrabay recently opened its first exclusive brand outlet (EBO) in Uttam Nagar, New Delhi. Moving ahead, the brand plans to open 10 more EBOs across Delhi NCR, which accounts for 35% of its total customer base.

Nutrabay aims to deepen its presence in the existing markets while expanding into high-potential regions. Its long-term retail expansion strategy follows a four-quadrant approach. First, prioritising areas where both category size and brand share are high. Second, regions where the brand is strong but the category is still emerging. Third, areas with lower brand share but higher category presence. And finally, low-priority markets where both brand and category presence are limited.

An EY India study a couple of years back showed that the average Indian began prioritising health and wellness since COVID, with many willing to spend more on fitness classes, natural foods, health supplements, and specialised diets. As the need for a nutritious square meal gains mindspace, the market for sports nutrition products matures, throwing up room for startups like Nutrabay to achieve ambitious growth targets.  

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post How Nutrabay Became An INR 100 Cr Profitable Brand With Its Lean & Frugal Playbook appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India, home to nearly 18% of the global populace and armed with only 4% of Earth’s freshwater resources, stands precariously on the brink of a severe water crisis in the next two years, states the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its Global Risk Report 2025. The fifth-largest economy in the world ranks down at 133rd spot in per-capita water availability index while being the second-largest consumer of water, using 20.1% of global water resources. 

India’s growing water stress may weigh on its sovereign credit strength, credit rating agency Moody’s warned last year. How can India avert the looming threat? The thought takes up a wider mindspace when the fear of going parched begins to haunt. By optimising the usage, suggest startups innovating solutions to keep the tap from running dry.

“We help industries and commercial spaces save water, sometimes as much as 30%, using software that tracks and optimises water usage,” said Ganesh Shankar, who founded FluxGen. 

India’s per capita water availability is projected to decrease to 1,341 Cu M by 2025 and 1,140 Cu M by 2050 – down significantly from 1,486 Cu M in 2021, the UN Water Development Report assessed. It warned that India would turn water-stressed this year onwards, with per capita availability slipping below 1,000 Cu M annually. 

“Urbanisation and industrialisation are the biggest factors contributing to this water scarcity in India. We chose to work with industries,” said Shankar. FluxGen works with factories and industries where water use is super high, especially in their production processes, as it aims to enable India to become water-positive. Its computer-based dashboard and mobile app offers 24/7 real-time monitoring of the water infrastructure for its clients to ensure sustainable practices. Its end-to-end water management software platform functions as a SaaS solution.

The company also works with smart cities and commercial establishments such as IT parks, hospitals, office complexes, and various urban infrastructures.

What could be a better place to think of water than Bengaluru? Historically known as the City of a Thousand Lakes, it has been battling a severe water crisis for the last couple of years because of unsustainable groundwater use and an exponential pace of urbanisation. Ganesh Shankar and Emanuel Deepak set up FlexGen in 2021. 

Bengaluru’s Shrinking Lakes Set The Stage

The lakes that Shankar saw all over the city when he was a child growing up in Bengaluru, kept shrinking, yielding space to concrete as the city evolved and expanded in leaps and bounds over the years. Some of its most significant places like the Majestic Bus Stand, marketplaces, and even the National Games’ Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium were once lakes. 

The city used to get water from nearby natural sources earlier. People had access to wells and drank water directly from them without the need for any external supply. But those wells dried up when Shankar was a schoolgoer. 

“Thankfully, there was tap water, but that too became insufficient very soon. Residents had to start building overhead tanks and sumps. Today, even overhead tanks cannot be filled up from groundwater; people depend entirely on water tankers to keep the taps running. That’s how the water situation deteriorated drastically,” said the founder and chief executive.

An unprecedented rise in temperature over the last few years has deepened the blues and pushed Bengaluru to the edge of Day Zero, which refers to the critical point at which a city’s water supply is predicted to be nearly completely depleted, leaving taps dry and communities parched. 

The authorities have long geared up to create awareness among people on saving water, reining in pollution, and preventing groundwater depletion. Shankar and Deepak chose to build their tech-based innovation on this growing awareness at local levels and push for sustainable practices at a global scale. 

Shankar was backed by his experience in a solar tech company and a keen interest in environmental science, while Deepak brought with him the experience earned at his earlier stints at Bosch and Larsen & Toubro.  

When FluxGen was set up, Bengaluru was losing its ground water reserves at an alarming speed. Buying water from tankers had begun taking a toll on the finances for both households as well as industries. A company that FluxGen engaged with had to halt daily production for nearly 14 days due to a severe water shortage. By the time they resumed operations, many of its customers had shifted to another dairy because dairy products are essential and they can’t wait. 

Water is crucial in industries like dairy and farming as much as it is essential in IT. According to the WEF report on water security, artificial intelligence-driven data centres alone may increase global water withdrawals by 4.2-6.6 Bn Cu M by 2027, equivalent to 4-6 times Denmark’s annual consumption. 

From Tata To Microsoft: Managing Water Data For 100+ Clients

Before founding his startup, Shankar ran a projects and consulting company focussed on sustainability. He worked across sectors like solar energy, water, and agriculture, taking on various sustainability-related projects. After FluxGen was set up, one of its industrial clients wanted to reduce both their water footprints and dependency on grid and groundwater sources. The goal was to become water positive.

This Tata Group company became one of FluxGen’s earliest customers. The team helped them identify inefficiencies in their water network through digitisation. They installed water flow meters, water level sensors, and water quality sensors, and integrated them into a centralised digital platform. This system provided real-time notifications about leakage, wastage, and usage. As a result, the client was able to reduce their water consumption by nearly 24%.

“That success became a turning point. It showed us that what we had solved for one client could be applied to others as well,” he said.

The company then widened its focus to include food processing and beverage industries, and sectors that are heavy consumers of freshwater. Dairies, for example, are expected to follow industry benchmarks. For every 1 Lakh litre of milk produced, they shouldn’t be consuming more than 1 Lakh litre of water. But in reality, most were exceeding this by a wide margin. FluxGen started working with several dairies, helping them reduce wastage and optimise usage.

Then it expanded to adjacent sectors like pharmaceuticals, which also depend heavily on clean water. “Our focus is making water data transparent and clear, based on the belief that ‘what can be measured can be managed’. That’s the core of our working principle,” said the FluxGen founder.

“We make water-related data available, accessible, and understandable. The goal is to ensure that industries have all the information they need to take meaningful, actionable steps towards reducing their water consumption. Because once the data is clear, the decisions become clearer too,” he added.

A faster and smarter way to handle water woes helps industries, factories, businesses and offices secure the essential compliance requirements. As regulations imposed by organisations like CGWA, BRSR, and CPCB, became stricter, the queue outside FluxGen for bagging the green certification turned longer. “We have many clients facing some form of regulatory pressure and urgently need to conserve water,” said Shankar. Some clients also sign up FluxGen to be leaders in water conservation in their respective industries.

“One of our key value propositions was around regulatory compliance. For example, the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) has clear mandates: industries must track their groundwater extraction and either reduce it by up to 20%, or improve groundwater levels by the same percentage. This created an opening for us. Even if companies weren’t immediately looking for end-to-end water management solutions, they needed to comply with these rules and we were able to get our foot in the door,” Shankar said.

Today, FluxGen claims to have worked with over 100 companies. According to the founder, it enabled Tata Steel to cut water withdrawal in mining operations by nearly 50% and reduce plant-level consumption by 26%. The startup has also partnered with Microsoft to support water stewardship efforts at its Hyderabad campus.

FluxGen worked in healthcare institutions like CARE Hospitals to help them monitor and optimise water usage at a granular level with its water monitoring application.

Inside FluxGen Tech Stack

FluxGen has built AquaGen, a water intelligence suite, to track water flow and water levels on a real-time basis with which a user can optimise the water usage, boost operational efficiency, and promote sustainable practices.

FluxGen’s computer-based dashboard and mobile app for real-time monitoring of the water infrastructure work on an assembly of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which are connected to various key points in the client’s water system. With this setup, it can track water flow, pressure, tank levels, sump levels, water quality, and even groundwater levels.

The startup also uses geospatial imaging to identify water-stressed areas. For instance, it can pinpoint aquifers in specific locations that are running low and suggest actionable steps for water replenishment, whether for compliance or for sustainability projects.
One of the key components of FluxGen’s tech solution to water management is Aqua GPT, a generative AI-based tool that sends out prescriptive alerts and suggests actionable insights to help identify inefficiencies in the water network, such as leaks, wastage, and excessive usage.

It also integrates data from SCADA systems and combines it with the IoT inputs and geospatial imaging to offer a complete picture. On top of that, it has launched genAI support, which provides intelligent recommendations on how clients can reduce their water consumption.

The INR 100 Cr Revenue Aspiration

The startup follows an asset-seeding yearly subscription model. Since there’s a hardware component involved in the first year – sensors for measuring flow, level, and quality – FluxGen bundles that along with the software platform and implementation costs. After the initial setup, customers move to an annual SaaS subscription, which also includes an annual maintenance contract as part of the offering.

“We’ve seen strong traction. In FY24, we clocked approximately $500,000 in revenue, and in FY25, we hope to have neared $1 Mn, nearly a 100% year-on-year growth,” Shankar said. “Our goal is to achieve INR 100 Cr (around $11.6 Mn) in revenue over the next three years.”

FluxGen recently raised INR 28 Cr ($3.36 Mn) in a Pre-Series A funding round, led by IAN Alpha Fund.

The startup has expanded its services beyond India to areas where water is significantly expensive. It deployed its solutions in geographies across the Middle East and Africa, including the UAE (Sharjah, Dubai), Oman, Madagascar (southern part), and Benin. “These are water-stressed regions that rely heavily on desalination. The higher cost of water makes our solution even more economically attractive,” the founder added.

FluxGen is also expanding across multiple business units and sites of existing enterprise clients, both in India and abroad. “Our vision extends beyond just improving water efficiency, we’re also enabling clients to improve rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment, and build water resilience into their long-term sustainability goals,” Shankar said.

Some of its Indian multinational clients have also started rolling out the FluxGen platform in their overseas outfits. “After full deployment across their Indian sites, one major customer introduced us to their African operations, where its solution is now being deployed.” 

Water management remains a largely untapped opportunity. With global investments in water infrastructure accelerating amid rising climate concerns, interest in the $17.28 Bn market, projected to reach $43.52 Bn by 2032, is gaining momentum. Yet, the space still lacks full-stack digital players equipped to address the opportunity at scale.

In India, the water infrastructure or water treatment chemical market is valued at $2.8 Bn, according to an estimate by financial services firm Prabhudas Lilladher. “India’s ability to grow from a $4 Tn economy to a $30 Tn economy is fundamentally a function of water,” former NITI Aayog chief Amitabh Kant said recently. With the government beefing up its efforts towards smarter water resource management, startups like FluxGen have a bright prospect along the road ahead.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post Can FluxGen Become The Go-To SaaS Layer For Industrial Water Management? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Some of the most exciting opportunities are often hidden in plain sight, and it only takes one fresh perspective to unravel them. That’s what Pavan Guntupalli, Rishikesh SR, and Aravind Sanka saw first hand when Rapido started out betting big on bike taxis.

Taking inspiration from Uber’s original ride-hailing model, Rapido began as a bike-taxi aggregator in 2015, looking to solve the problem of last-mile connectivity and short commutes. Seeing that Ola and Uber had some issues filling this gap, Rapido made a bold bet.

It gave daily commuters a faster way to beat traffic economically and helped private bike owners earn an extra buck. What began then has snowballed into worthy competition for Ola and Uber.

Cut to 2025, Rapido is not only on par with Ola and Uber in terms of revenue streams, but also the market leader, according to cofounder and CEO Sanka.

“At a country level, today we are market leaders in bike taxis with 70% market share, we are market leaders in auto rides with close to 40% share, and second in cab-hailing or taxi market with 22% share. When you combine all three, we are market leaders,” Rapido’s Sanka claimed in a recent conversation with Inc42

How exactly did Rapido crack this in 10 years, when Ola and others such as BluSmart have either fallen behind or have completely disintegrated? As the Bengaluru-based unicorn turns 10 in 2025, it’s time to look at the journey from INR 6 Lakh in revenue in the first year to INR 1,000 Cr in FY25, as Sanka revealed.

Catching Up With Rapido At 10

While many have tried to replicate their model over the years, not many have been able to break the Ola-Uber duopoly, despite there being several opportunities due to unhappy drivers, customers and an uncertain regulatory environment amid safety-related incidents.

Before Rapido, the three founders launched a logistics startup Karrier, which eventually had to shut shop as most startups do at an early stage.

But the experience taught the trio to see the Indian ride-hailing market from a fresh perspective. The idea of taking on Ola and Uber, both huge companies by then, was daunting.

Plus, bike taxi apps were springing up everywhere including Delhi NCR-based Now and Bikxie and Bengaluru-based Pilot, Mu Ride and Streetryderr. These new ventures was not deterred by lack of clarity on bike taxi regulations.

“Being in a price-sensitive market like India, bikes were the best new option to not only serve a large group of daily commuters in cities but also take on giants like Ola,” Sanka recalled.

The validation for this idea came later when Ola and Uber both forayed into the bike taxi segment in 2016, starting with Bengaluru. This was just a few months after Rapido’s launch.

The Age Of Expansion

In the first three years, Rapido’s bike taxi service was restricted to Bengaluru, Gurugram, and Mysuru. But when the startup decided to expand, it went into overdrive. It launched services in 60 cities in 2018,  Sanka said.

External funding was a big boost. The company first raised an undisclosed amount of funding in 2016 from Hero MotoCorp’s Pawan Munjal, AdvantEdge, Astarc Ventures, People Group’s Anupam Mitta, among others. It raised $10 Mn towards the end of 2018, which helped the company in its first major expansion across a few tier II cities.

The next significant boost came when Rapido raised $55 Mn led by WestBridge Capital in 2019, which helped it cover the lucrative Delhi market and other major cities.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, like most other ride-hailing business, Rapido forayed into hyperlocal deliveries and essentials supply to survive.

But there was another bold addition at this time. Even as ride-hailing all over the world was going through a slowdown, Rapido launched a new service, allowing auto-rickshaw ride. That proved to be a worthy gamble, especially as Ola and Uber were caught on the backfoot at this time.

Sanka says this allowed Rapido to build a big network within the auto-rickshaw market quickly. “Our motto is simple — We see problems as an opportunity to double down. When we needed to be aggressive, we were, and when we needed to take a step back, we did,” the cofounder said.

Building The Revenue Momentum

Right before the Covid-19 pandemic, the startup’s operating revenue surpassed the INR 90 Cr mark in FY20. However, losses also widened to INR 243.6 Cr in FY20 from INR 53.3 Cr in FY19. By this time, Rapido’s customer base had crossed the 15 Mn mark with 1.5 Mn+ registered captains.

As expected, the pandemic wreaked havoc, with many businesses coming to a standstill. Rapido was no exception. Even though it tried to stay ahead of the curve to beat the pandemic blues, its top line shrank to INR 72 Cr in FY21 with a net loss of INR 166 Cr.

The company clocked INR 144.8 Cr in revenue in FY22, although losses kept mounting on the books.

In FY24, Rapido’s operating revenue jumped 1.5X year-on-year (YoY) to INR 648.1 Cr. The startup also managed to narrow its losses by 45% YoY to INR 371 Cr last year from INR 675 Cr in FY23. 

According to Sanka, the startup has nearly doubled its top line in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, which is expected to translate to a little over INR 1,000 Cr in revenue.

Rapido is confident of turning fully profitable in FY26. It also projects to grow 70% every year in the next two to three fiscal years from here on.

How The Market Was Won

Rapido today boasts 20 Mn transacting users and 2 Mn transacting bike taxi partners every month, according to Sanka. The final piece of the ride-hailing puzzle is the cab service, which Rapido launched in December 2023. Last year, the company entered the unicorn club by raising $120 Mn from WestBridge Capital, and has leveraged this to add more users and drivers.

As per data on Similarweb, Rapido’s driver and user apps have higher monthly downloads than Ola and Uber as of March 2025. In March, Rapido’s driver app averaged over 720K downloads per month, while Ola and Uber’s driver apps in India each saw less than 500K monthly downloads.

Similarly, Rapido Captain app’s average monthly downloads crossed 820K, while its user app downloads stood at 7.3 Mn in March.

Rapido epitomises the slow-and-steady approach and unlike Uber or Ola, it did not have a lot of distractions. Uber’s focus in the post-pandemic era had turned to its IPO in the US, and then to profitability, which led to some compromise on growth and a focus on diversification.

As we have covered in the past, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal’s bigger focus on Ola Electric had led to some cuts and slowdown for the ride-hailing business. And in order to boost revenue, Ola Consumer ended up adding new verticals too quickly, which led to lopsided spending.

Ola Consumer (then Ola Cabs) had already captured more than 50% of the market share within seven years of its operations in 2017. It had 125 Mn registered users and 1 Mn+ driver partners by 2017,  and consolidated revenue of INR 1,380.7 Cr, which jumped to INR 2,222.6 Cr in FY18. However, the company’s losses were almost double this.

Today, when Rapido is expected to cross INR 1,000 Cr in revenue, Ola and Uber are already clocking around 2-4X of the same, but are still loss-making.

But, Rapido’s strength lies in its growing market share and an asset-light model.

Just like any other ride-hailing venture, the company earns its revenue from drivers or riders. Earlier, it used to charge a 15-30% commission per ride, just like Ola and Uber. However, in February last year, it reduced the burden of high commissions that drivers had to pay, attracting more “captains” to the platform.

While Rapido’s bikers in some cities are still transitioning from a commission-based model to the new subscription model, all its autos and cabs run on the new model. 

Rapido’s bike and auto “captains” pay around INR 20 to INR 30 to use its platform for a day. Similarly, cab drivers pay a platform fee of INR 40 per day or INR 500 per month.

Also, Rapido doesn’t own or lease vehicles. This has not only helped the company keep its business asset-light but also survive in a market otherwise dominated by big sharks.

Speaking with Inc42, mobility-focussed VC firm AdvantEdge’s Kunal Khattar said Rapido’s team has proven that capital can never be the biggest competitive moat in a country like India — it’s about building businesses frugally.

“When Rapido was raising INR 5 Cr, Ola was raising hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the team has proven its about building businesses in a very patient way. They were focussed and not chasing scale without a proper product or platform. I think that discipline has proven it’s not about capital. In fact, being under-capitalised sometimes is better than being over-capitalised,” Khattar, who has invested in Rapido, told Inc42.

AdvantEdge’s first INR 2.3 Cr cheque to Rapido was invested at an INR 14 Cr pre-money valuation in 2019, and has already given a 50X return so far, Khattar added.

Drifting Through Regulatory Roadblocks

Bike taxis have long been a bone of contention in several states. This is primarily because under India’s Motor Vehicles Act, private vehicles cannot be operated as commercial vehicles. 

As India does not have a provision for bikes to be used as taxis, different state governments handle these companies differently, with some states and cities even introducing temporary bans.

From Telangana’s gig workers’ union to various auto unions and state governments like Delhi and Karnataka, many have raised objections, sometimes calling for outright bans on bike taxi services.

This hither and thither has been going on for a long time in various parts of the country, including Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. Many bike-taxi businesses have been negatively impacted due to ambiguity among various state governments. 

Rapido, Ola, and Uber got a much-needed breather when the central government issued an advisory early last year recognising motorcycles as contract carriages under Section 2(7) of the Motor Vehicles Act. However, despite this clarification, there are still legal grey areas and state-level challenges continue.

Another major issue Rapido faces is rider and passenger safety, especially for women. There have been multiple reports of sexual harassment by Rapido riders, which has raised serious concerns.

In response to these incidents, Rapido launched a safety initiative where users receive a follow-up call after evening rides to check if the journey was safe. The company also claims that during evening hours, its algorithm is designed to make rides safer for women passengers by tagging them with experienced riders with high ratings.

“We take safety very seriously at the management level. Every month, we track and review the number of incidents. We’ve implemented several measures, including pre-ride document checks, background verification, and real-time speed monitoring. If riders cross a set speed limit, they receive a warning. Repeat offences lead to deactivation from the platform,” said Sanka.

He added that the company launched insurance for both riders and users even before it became a government mandate. This was in anticipation that two-wheelers are often less safe than autos or cabs. 

Coming Up: Rapido Food Delivery

Committed, the company has embraced food delivery to directly lock horns with Swiggy and Zomato. Until its recent full-fledged foray, Rapido was delivering food for Swiggy and ONDC as a B2B partner.

While these are early days, Rapido is expected to bank on zero commission model for growth and look at other ways of earning revenue in the food delivery game, as per reports. It is also in the process of setting up a fintech subsidiary, which could play a role in both food delivery and ride hailing.

The revenue diversification is a necessary step as the startup is eyeing an IPO within the next two to three years, and needs to push itself to show profitable growth before that comes around.

In terms of ride-hailing, Rapido has seen a gap in its airport cab services business, where it will need to expand beyond metros and to new cities. Expanding the overall ride-hailing presence to 500 cities is another major target, but as Sanka told us, this exercise is going to be cost-intensive, especially to establish supply.

Besides this, linking public transport points or innovating to improve public transport is a big goal for Sanka and the team. The cofounder says public transit in tier 1 cities is fraught with challenges in first and last mile connectivity.

“We are building solutions on how to make our services more effective and integrated for central transportation,” Rapido’s Sanka added.

The company has already launched metro ticketing in Delhi, Chennai, and Hyderabad, where users can mention their booked metro ticket, and a ride would be available to them sooner than usual

While these initiatives could push up costs, they will also help the company diversify its revenue stream. The question is to what extent, and how far does it take Rapido from its slow-and-steady approach thus far, which has been a key success factor in the first ten years of its journey.

The next ten years and beyond might be defined by something altogether different. Going beyond the INR 1,000 Cr mark and scaling up might mean taking on more differentiated bets. How far will that take Rapido from its core mission?

[Edited By Shishir Parasher]

The post Rapido At 10: The Ride To The INR 1,000 Cr Club appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Fashion was both a legacy handed down to Srishti Tanwani from her mother as well as a passion that she cradled over the years.  

As a young girl living in Raipur, Srishti didn’t spend her childhood watching cartoons or playing outside like other kids. Instead, she found herself in the midst of fabrics, sketches, and designs. Her mother had been running a boutique since long before she was born. 

“Fashion was always a part of my life, without me consciously choosing it. My mother used to take me everywhere with her. That’s how I spent a lot of time around her work,” said Tanwani, who set up Indo Era, which earned fame for its contemporary and stylish ethnic Indian wear and emerged as an over INR 500 Cr brand. “I saw my mother building her boutique from scratch. I got my inspiration from her struggle.”

In 2018, Indo Era forayed into an INR 16.8 Lakh Cr ethnic wear market for women, dominated by brands like BIBA, FabIndia, and Global Desi, with its wide range of kurtas, kurta sets, dresses, suits, Anarkalis, co-ord sets, and Indo-western fashion that blends traditional Indian craftsmanship with modern silhouettes and aesthetics. The price tags vary from INR 599 to INR 4,000. The outfits are available across major ecommerce platforms like Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, Lifestyle.com, and Shoppers Stop, besides its own D2C website.

Indo Era reported a whopping surge in net revenue – the company equates it with sales after returns – to INR 214.88 Cr in FY24 from INR 3.11 Cr a year back. Its net profit too jumped from INR 16.4 Lakh to INR 4.14 Cr in this period on the back of higher sales and better operational efficiency. On the expenses side, the company’s total costs surged to INR 208.39 Cr in FY24 from INR 2.92 Cr in FY23, primarily because of higher material consumption and scaling up of operations. Indo Era did not share financials for FY25. 

As per the founder, the company’s gross revenue, which the company equates with the sales figure, stood at INR 210 Cr in FY23, INR 300 Cr in FY24, and touched INR 500 Cr in FY25.

The founder, however, mentioned that the FY23 numbers do not reflect the company’s actual scale, as Indo Era operated as a partnership firm from March 2019 until January 2023, when it transitioned into a private limited entity. 

The brand’s growth strategy is based on two pillars – ecommerce and consumer mindset. Indo Era ensured clarity in understanding what consumers in Tier-II and Tier-III cities actually wanted. But that wasn’t all behind the growth. Its insight in the market and a clear demand-supply gap too fuelled the rise.

“Either the clothes were too expensive to wear every day, or they were so cheap that they lacked quality and finishing. I wanted to build a brand that’s stylish, has good quality, and is still affordable, especially in smaller towns where options are limited,” Tanwani said.

Spinning The Yarn: How The Brand Indo Era Was Created 

Unlike other startup founders who are usually seasoned for years and armed with industry insight, Tanwani had nothing but a dream to chase. She wasn’t sure how to pursue it until her first brush with ecommerce.

Engineering seemed exciting but fashion, her true calling as she says, beckoned her soon. The engineering graduate moved on to pursue fashion management from NIFT. She completed two internships before the course was over. One was with a social commerce platform and the other was with Aditya Birla’s ecommerce platform in the footwear category.

She realised that the apparel industry couldn’t be explored in the traditional way – a tech edge was a necessity. Ecommerce was the answer. Tanwani joined Myntra and served the ecommerce major for eight months to get a closer look at the new-age market dynamics. This gave her a deeper understanding of the ecommerce space and its great potential. 

It was during her days at Myntra when she met Deepak Sheta and Ambrish Miyani, who were vendors to the startup. “We shared the same vision. It helped us team up to explore the market deeper to gain clarity before we decided to build an apparel brand in the ethnic wear space,” Tanwani said.

While Tanwani is the chief executive at Indo Era, Miyani serves as the chief operating officer and Sheta as the chief financial officer. 

After interacting with nearly 60 brands, the founders realised that most of them had not surpassed INR 1,500 Cr in valuation. They realised that while ethnic wear might have its limits, Indian apparel had unlimited potential to scale. 

Tanwani was focussed on her ambition to build an INR 5,000 Cr to INR 10,000 Cr Indian apparel brand. She discovered that consumers in Tier-II and Tier-III cities were seeking stylish products at affordable prices, but they couldn’t find them. This helped her zero in on the target group. 

“We observed that while western wear might be common in metros, a large portion of women in Tier-II and Tier-III cities still preferred Indian wear for daily use – even those who were working. There was a clear need for everyday fashion that was stylish, functional, and affordable, rather than just occasional or impulse-driven pieces,” Tanwani said. 

The founders registered the startup in 2018 and launched the brand in March 2019 on platforms like Myntra and Amazon. Indo Era rolled out its D2C window about a year and a half ago.

The company started the journey with just 120 SKUs and today it runs over 4,800 SKUs. The brand has stepped out of the early-day target segment in Tier II and Tier III markets, making significant penetration in Tier-I and in metro cities, driven by initiatives like faster delivery through Amazon Prime and quick commerce. It has also expanded its customer base to GenZ with items such as spaghetti kurtas and co-ord sets.

Indo Era’s Growth Playbook

Even as a bootstrapped startup at the time of its launch, Indo Era had a clearly defined route to profitability by growing into a sustainable and scalable business. By the time the company turned six, its gross revenue had exceeded INR 500 Cr with a monthly sales figure above 6 Lakh. More than the success story, what is more intriguing is its reliance on purely organic growth. The founders claimed that the company spent zero on marketing till last year.

“Unlike many startups that burn cash to build visibility, we consciously avoided flashy PR campaigns or aggressive branding until last year,” Tanwani said. “From day one, the idea was to let the product speak for itself and turn customers into loyal advocates.” 

Another strategic stand that contributed to the brand’s profitability was its refusal to follow the traditional route. “If we keep following others, we’ll never succeed,” believes the founder. “Like everyone else, we initially thought offline was the only route to success in this space. However, we chose not to follow the conventional path. Instead, we decided to do what we thought was best for us. That’s why we started with ecommerce and only entered the offline segment last year,” she said. 

The brand stays in sync with the evolving taste of its customers. While it started as a workwear and everyday fashion brand, today it serves something for almost every occasion in an Indian household. “While earlier, customers shopped only once or twice a year, today the average buyer shops four to five times annually – across Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Holi, weddings, vacations, and even smaller home functions. Each of these occasions demands a different look and price point,” the founder pointed out. This shift prompted the brand to expand its catalogue to include need-based, occasion-specific offerings.

Another great accelerator for Indo Era has been its strong and efficient manufacturing setup. From the start, the brand’s focus has been on backward integration and control over the entire production process. It used to partner with contract manufacturers at key production hubs of Surat, Jaipur, and Kolkata, where the factories manufactured exclusively for the brand. This ensured quality while maintaining flexibility and agility it needed to meet the constantly evolving consumer demands.

By making these manufacturing units in-house, Indo Era streamlined operations, reduced delays, and improved quality. The entire structure – from procurement of fabric from pre-approved suppliers to embroidery and stitching – everything is handled at the partner factories, which eases operational bottlenecks and ensures high standards. It makes the brand flexible to respond to market trends, besides making it agile to bring in new products faster than rivals.

“Because of our strong manufacturing setup, we can bring new products to the market within 20–45 days, which most players can’t match. This gives us a significant advantage in a category traditionally known for longer turnaround times,” Tanwani said. This has further helped the brand build a stronger relationship with marketplaces like Myntra and Flipkart. 

How Indo Era Cracked The Tough Codes

The business blueprint took the brand deep into the black earlier than imagined, but the way to profitability threw up a host of challenges. 

The womenswear market in India, expected to average a 3.49% growth rate to 2029, is teeming with apparel brands, making it a blend of organised and unorganised players. In such a cluttered market, the challenges are endless. From breaking through in a crowded market to maintaining affordability without compromising on quality, Indo Era’s founders had to navigate multiple hurdles, especially as a young brand competing with legacy players and the ever-growing pool of D2C brands.

For a young founder like Tanwani, it wasn’t a cakewalk to success in a capital-intensive, inventory-led category.

“In ecommerce, you can’t wait for an order to come and then stitch. You have to invest upfront – build the stock, create more than 4,000 SKUs with multiple size options, and just hope the designs get accepted by the market,” she said. 

The unpredictability of demand makes the way bumpier. “You’re placing a bet every time on whether a new design will click or not. And, once the customer receives the product, you get immediate feedback in the form of reviews and ratings. If it goes wrong, it feels like a slap on your face.”  

Quality is the edge for a company to thrive in such a competitive market, believes the founder. “I used to read every single customer review at night. I didn’t know the buyer personally or what occasion she was shopping for, but her comment gave me insights,” Tanwani said. Over time, this feedback loop encouraged the brand to double down on quality control, add extra layers of checks, and refine every detail – from fabric texture to ironing – before a garment was shipped.

Another major challenge that the brand faced was on the operational front. “Given India’s vast diversity in body types, particularly the differences in upper and lower body proportions, selling coordinated sets made it especially challenging, as both the top and bottom needed to fit well. This became one of the biggest pain points in the early days.”

Fast fashion brought its own set of complexities for the startup. “We launched 300 products every month, many of which were experimental. Rapid scaling to trendy styles was often difficult. Some of these involved intricate embroidery or hand-painted pieces, which can’t be launched with speed. So, speed in terms of ecommerce also became a significant challenge.” To address this, the brand began ensuring that it always had a backup plan ready for any design that gained traction.

The brand also faces industry-wide challenges like design duplication. “Ethnic wear rarely features logos, making the originality hard to protect,” the founder noted. To counter this, Indo Era focusses on technically detailed products that are difficult to replicate. It invests in smart fabric blends to enhance comfort and longevity. As a woman designing for women, she has brought a personal understanding of her audience’s lifestyle. 

“Our garments are made to be worn all day – from work to social outings – without compromising on comfort,” she claimed. Every piece goes through thoughtful R&D in fabric and fit.

Weaving A Dream

While Indo Era’s journey has had its share of ups and downs, what aided the effort is the founder’s strong data-driven approach. With a background in IT, she’s been able to tap into analytics to decode consumer behaviour, looking at everything from browsing patterns and search queries to conversion rates and global fashion trends. These insights helped her shape moodboards and seasonal collections that aren’t just on-trend, but also aligned with what customers are genuinely looking for – both in terms of design and pricing.

Backed by over INR 500 Cr revenue, the brand targets 95% of the market that remains untapped in the offline sector. From five stores now, Indo Era plans to roll out 25 more this year, with a focus on metros as, according to the founder, it is gaining a lot of traction from Tier I towns.

The surge in quick commerce also prompts the brand to expand into this space. Available on platforms like MNow and Flipkart Minutes, Indo Era will soon be launched on Zepto. 

As Indo Era pivots on expansion and growth, marketing attains higher significance in this orchestration. The D2C brand plans to embark on more expressive and lifestyle-driven campaigns that will focus on visually engaging content, showing women in real-life scenarios, whether reading a book, enjoying coffee with friends, or navigating daily activities, rather than displaying traditional, posed images. This strategy, as per the founder, is designed to create a stronger emotional connect with the brand, engaging customers and positioning Indo Era as a lifestyle brand.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post How Indo Era Became An INR 500 Cr Brand In Just Six Years appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Diamonds may never lose their lustre, but the industry is undergoing a quiet transformation. Once seen as a niche alternative, lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) are gaining mainstream traction, driven by rising awareness around sustainability, traceability, and ethical sourcing.

First created by General Electric in the 1950s, lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) have evolved through decades of research. Made from diamond seeds in controlled environments, they match natural stones on the 4Cs — cut, clarity, colour and carat — but cost 60–70% less.

The reasons are clear: no mining, no environmental degradation, and far lower production costs, making LGDs a compelling choice in a market long dominated by mined gems.

“In essence, they are the future, signalling the coming of a new age,” said Rupesh Jain, founder of Candere and Lucira. 

Born in a family of jewellers and a software engineer by training, he built Candere from scratch and exited when Kalyan Jewellers acquired the fine jewellery brand at a valuation of INR 300 Cr. He has now taken a leap of faith and transitioned to lab-grown diamonds with an all-new brand called Lucira (derived from lucent), set to be launched around Akshaya Tritiya (April 30) this year.

Jain will be tapping into a global lab-grown diamond market expected to reach $59.2 Bn by 2032 at a CAGR of 9.6%. In India, the market value is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.7% to reach $8.3 Bn by 2032.  

The new venture aims to bring sustainable, exclusive pieces tailored for fashion-forward buyers who crave contemporary, stackable and convertible solitaire jewellery — designs that seamlessly integrate into everyday wear. Lucira’s core clientele includes modern brides and grooms, discerning gifters and individuals celebrating special occasions and personal milestones. The brand will also appeal to global Indians who value tradition and transformation.

Lucira is building a hybrid distribution model, starting with ecommerce and expanding into physical retail. To bridge the trust gap often seen in online jewellery purchases, it plans to introduce try-at-home services and expert consultations in the coming year.

Operationally, the brand relies on a shorter, more transparent supply chain. Key processes like sorting, cutting, polishing and setting are handled nearby, reducing dependency on multiple intermediaries. This proximity enables just-in-time manufacturing and tighter control over costs.

To mitigate post-purchase friction, it plans to offer a 15-day window for returns and exchanges. Exchanges are free; refunds (excluding damaged products) carry a nominal shipping fee. Customised pieces and high-value items qualify only for exchange. A lifetime exchange and 90% buyback policy further support long-term ownership.

The brand is positioned for woke millennials and Gen Z, who weigh ethics and sustainability alongside aesthetics. Unlike their mined counterparts, lab-grown diamonds are not tied to ethical dilemmas, human rights abuses or environmental effects, boasting up to 80% lower carbon footprint.

“I wanted to create a brand that respects tradition while embracing the future where luxury is beautiful and responsible. Younger generations want their love stories to reflect their values. And Lucira is my response to this cultural shift,” he said, adding that his new venture would focus on fine jewellery made affordable through tech innovation. 

How Lucira Aims To Dazzle: A Deep Dive Into Its Technology, Design & Quality

In spite of growing interest, LGDs remain a novelty for traditional carat shoppers who often link diamonds with status and legacy.

The perception that lower prices signal inferior quality also lingers among consumers. The lower price tag of lab-grown diamonds triggers doubt rather than comfort. And price sensitivity, instead of working in favour of LGD products, often becomes a psychological hurdle. 

The obstacles don’t stop there. High customer acquisition costs, aggressive retargeting efforts, the risk of returns, fierce competition, demand for customisation and regulatory hurdles, including import duties, further inflate final price tags.

To cope with these challenges and outshine its peers, Lucira has built four clear differentiators. These include:  

CVD diamonds for purity, sustainability and affordability: Lucira’s diamonds are created using the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method, which exposes small diamond seeds to carbon-rich gases in an energy-efficient vacuum chamber.This method consumes less water and energy, generates no toxic runoff and avoids mining-related land degradation. Diamonds are cut and polished, often in facilities powered by renewable energy. Many producers also incorporate recycled gases and carbon capture methods, thus enhancing sustainability. 

Design innovation: Jain’s vision for Lucira’s design language is clear. It will be bold, clutterless, warm and deliberately understated. The brand focuses on clean, versatile designs inspired by traditional Indian motifs and adapted for modern, everyday wear.All pieces are crafted using eco-friendly manufacturing processes, aiming for high precision without compromising on aesthetics or sustainability.

Ergonomic jewellery for greater comfort: Each piece is lightweight, skin-friendly, and free of nickel and lead. Thoughtfully designed open-back settings also enhance airflow and help avoid skin irritations caused by long-time wear. 

Validation and certifications: While certification for lab-grown diamonds is not legally required in India, most are evaluated by prestigious labs like the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the International Gemological Institute (IGI) and Solitaire Gemmological Laboratories (SGL). These certificates provide details regarding the 4Cs and confirm a diamond’s lab origin, ensuring quality and transparency for consumers.

As the industry operates within the broader framework of trade, hallmarking and consumer protection regulations, sellers are legally bound to disclose the synthetic nature of diamonds per the guidelines of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the Consumer Protection Act.

While hallmarking remains mandatory for gold, it is not enforced for diamonds. Still, certification is widely regarded as an industry standard. Importers of lab-grown rough diamonds must comply with customs regulations, using designated HS codes and providing documentation that confirms their synthetic origin.

Lucira’s Growth Plans To Reach New Heights, Redefine Diamond Buying

Lab-grown diamonds might be the latest trend in the global fine jewellery/affordable luxury segment. Still, it is growing quickly and may account for 21% of all diamonds sold in 2025, per a Statista report. More interestingly, many Indian startups dealing in LGDs recently raised early stage venture funding. Among these were Jewelbox, Firefly Diamonds, Limelight Diamonds and True Diamond.

On the other hand, Solitario raised $3.6 Mn in a pre-IPO round, while Aukera Jewellery is reportedly in talks to secure $15 Mn in Series B. Besides, India has an export potential worth INR 40K Cr, and the lab-grown diamond brands at home can lock horns with global giants.     

Given these growth opportunities, Jain is positioning Lucira for the long haul and building strong customer connections. Every detail regarding the brand — from micro-interactions and curated product pages to guided, concierge-like experiences — featured on its website should help build the momentum further and drive traction. 

Lucira is trying to craft its legacy by shaping the responsible luxury trend in India’s highly aspirational market. During its initial phase, Jain wants to establish the company as a go-to brand for solitaire jewellery, especially rings, and streamline its D2C revenue channel. After developing a strong online presence, he plans to introduce a plethora of brick-and-mortar outlets and technology tools.

The brand’s expansion will unfold in phases, from online to offline stores in key locations. Jain’s vision is an omnichannel model combining the best digital and physical retail, ensuring a sustainable and scalable growth trajectory.

The first two retail outlets will be set up in Mumbai and Delhi this year. The founder is keen to start eight stores in key metros in the second year, followed by 16 in the third year and 32 more offline stores in the fourth year. These will include the company’s outlets across global markets such as the Middle East, the UK and the US.

The second phase will introduce customisable engagement rings, engraved solitaires and stackable sets, all powered by 3D design tools, AI-driven recommendations, product personalisation, virtual try-ons and blockchain-backed provenance. Next, Lucira will expand into lightweight workwear solitaires, casual luxury pieces and convertible designs to cater to different occasions.

Jain told Inc42 he would keep luxury bridal collections, cocktail rings and exclusive high-fashion pieces for later. He would collaborate with renowned designers to infuse art, culture, and contemporary trends into those exclusive pieces. 

“We aim to become the Tiffany of lab-grown solitaires — not by imitation, but by innovation,” he added. 

Whether it can cut through the noise of an already cluttered market remains to be seen, but Jain’s Lucira is setting the stage with a polished pitch.

The post How Rupesh Jain’s Lucira Wants To Redefine Luxury With Lab-Grown Diamonds appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In 2025, more than 11,800 active satellites orbit Earth, and this number is expected to surge past 40,000 by 2030. As the sky gets increasingly crowded, the demand for faster, more efficient data transfer has never been higher.

Satellites power everything from navigation and internet access to climate monitoring and disaster response. Yet much of this data still travels slowly back to Earth, hampered by the limitations of traditional radio frequency (RF) systems.

To overcome these bottlenecks, the industry is turning to optical satellite communication — a technology that promises data transfer speeds up to 100 times faster than conventional RF. Astrogate Labs, a Bengaluru-based spacetech startup, is tapping into this shift with its laser-based satellite communication systems aimed at redefining how satellites transmit data.

“Modern satellites can generate over 100 GB of data every day. If you use radio frequency transmission to download that data, you would hardly transfer 20-25% of the data in a day. With our optical transmission technology, you will get more than 20 times that bandwidth,” Nitish Singh, who cofounded spacetech startup Astrogate Labs, told Inc42. 

Singh, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, and his friend Aditya Kedlaya, from IIT Guwahati, set up Astrogate Labs in 2017 to build its laser-based satellite communication tech stack with a vision to take on overseas rivals like Astrolight and Archangel Lightworks, as well as giants like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and China’s Chang Guang Satellite Technology. 

Astrogate Labs now aims for a slice of the global optical satellite communication market, which is likely to cross $5 Bn by 2030 from more than $1.5 Bn.

Lunar Landing To Space Data Traffic 

The tale of Astrogate Labs is that of to the moon and back, nearly coinciding with the NASA project of laser beam reflection from 385,000 Km away on the lunar surface in 2020. 

The seeds of Astrogate Labs germinated when Singh was a part of Team Indus, the only Indian company that competed in the Google Lunar X Prize to land a spacecraft on the moon back in 2019. As the leader of mission planning and operations, Singh encountered a fundamental challenge in satellite communications. During his three-and-a-half years at Team Indus, he spotted the difficulty in getting large amounts of data back to earth using traditional radio frequencies. 

He believes that communication bottleneck was one of the key challenges for the space industry. The issue remained unresolved as spacetech companies focussed on launching more things into space or launching them cheaply. 

Singh chose to ask how to make these launches more economical and how to fetch more data from the satellites? He found his answer in optical satellite communication. This formed the core idea behind Astrogate Labs.

In 2021, Astrogate Labs started developing Astro-Link, its laser-based satellite communication terminal that enables data transmission rates of up to 1 Gbps. 

While most of its large competitors today are focussed on larger satellites, Astrogate Labs targets a growing market of small satellites or CubeSats – a class of nanosatellites that use a standard size and form factor with dimensions of 10x10x10 cm – that demand more intricate engineering, given their size, weight, and power constraints.

“Laser technology-based data transfer can go up to 10 Gbps and beyond. The product that we are building right now is for small satellites and can communicate at a data rate of 1 Gbps over a 1,000 Km,” Singh said.

The startup plans to scale it to 10 Gbps in future versions.

After almost eight years of developing its space-to-ground solution, building the satellite communication hardware and getting it qualified for a space launch, Astrogate Labs is yet to test its technology in space. It is now working towards flight heritage, which is the industry term for proven performance in orbit. 

The European Space Agency says satellite operators and manufacturers accept flight heritage when a technology works in a commercially representative environment, ideally, a commercial company on a commercial satellite. 

Astrogate Labs plans to have its technology in space by the end of 2025, which would be a crucial milestone for gaining broader customer acceptance. Its business model combines hardware sales with a service component where satellite operators can purchase its optical terminal and integrate it into their satellite before launch, and then subscribe to a ground communication service to receive the data.

This approach minimises the infrastructure investment required by customers while providing Astrogate Labs with both upfront and recurring revenue streams.

Focussed on government and defence contracts, the startup has four clients, including the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is also collaborating with the Indian Navy and in early stages of discussion with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for applications such as air-to-ground and air-to-air communications. 

Astrogate Labs sees significant opportunities in Earth observation satellite constellations operated by commercial companies. India has one of the largest constellations of these remote sensing satellites. Instruments onboard these satellites provide data in a diversified spatial, spectral and temporal resolution to cater to different user requirements. 

As a deeptech startup, which requires more patient capital for its longer development cycles, it sees government organisations as ‘early anchor customers’ before full-fledged commercial deployment of its tech stack.

Navigating Tech Hurdles On Space Track

Radio frequency is an electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths at different points on the spectrum. Satellites modulate their data in electromagnetic signals before sending to ground stations. As the communication travels, the waves spread out. Laser-based communications differ from radio waves by packing the entire data into significantly tighter waves so that ground stations can receive more data at once. 

Despite its distinct advantages, the laser communication technology didn’t receive much attention until recently, when major players like Starlink and Amazon Project Kuiper started investing in it.

Laser communication also scores low in terms of power consumption compared to RF.  It doesn’t also require expensive spectrum licensing, unlike RF systems, and has several other benefits, including better security.

However, implementing laser communication technology for satellites presents significant technical hurdles, particularly in maintaining precise alignment between rapidly moving objects separated by hundreds of kilometres.

“Unlike radio frequency antennas, which can produce radio beams that are many times the size of the earth, laser beams are relatively narrow. This means the optical transmitter should be fitted on a precise pointing and tracking system that directs the laser beams in the direction of ground-based receivers,” Singh explained.

The startup has developed sophisticated pointing and tracking systems that continuously adjust the laser’s aim with micrometre-level precision.

The startup has spent years refining this technology to work within the size, weight, and power constraints of small satellites.

Weather conditions are another major challenge for laser beams, as they, unlike radio waves, can’t penetrate thick cloud cover. But Astrogate Labs claims to have found a solution to that by strategically placing ground stations in regions known to have clear skies.

The startup has made collaborations with companies like Momentus, which helps in navigating satellites in space, and governments to set up ground stations in Australia, while it is mapping its foray into the Middle East. In 2021, Astrogate Labs partnered with the University of Tasmania to set up an optical ground station and collaborated with Indian defence organisations between 2022 and 2025 for secure ship-to-ship (direct optical signals through air, not radio or acoustic waves) laser communications.

Looking To The Stars

After successful demonstration of their laser communication systems, Astrogate has passed the space grade certification tests, including thermal, vacuum, and vibration testing. The startup has scheduled its first flight missions in 12 months to test the technology on actual satellites.

With its recent funding, the company has started hiring across departments such as avionics, optomechanics, and mechanical departments, as well as marketing and operations.

With this fundraising and growth in the number of clients, Astrogate Labs expects to reach the growth capital stage within 18-24 months.

The company looks to raise additional funds to set up commercial optical ground stations and expand its commercial customer base beyond defence and government applications by 2026.

Singh said the company is also working to develop inter-satellite terminals for laser-based communication between satellites operating as part of its network. The prototypes are expected to be ready by early next year. 

As satellite data becomes increasingly crucial for applications ranging from climate monitoring to disaster response, the demand for higher-bandwidth communications continues to grow. By addressing the data bottleneck with its laser communication technology, Astrogate Labs is building infrastructure that could fundamentally change how we use satellites, ensuring that crucial information doesn’t get trapped in space.

“We are building a technology in an area that is more like whispering into someone’s ear – the message is focussed, efficient, and private – unlike traditional satellite communication that he deems shouting across a crowded room,” summed up Singh.

In a field historically dominated by government agencies and large aerospace corporations, startups like Astrogate Labs could help Indian satellite companies improve their existing technologies while potentially making the services faster, more reliable, and more comprehensive.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post Astrogate Labs Bets On Laser Technology To Speed Up Satellite Data Transfers appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Life’s too short for bad coffee, so the saying goes, and Matt Chitharanjan firmly believes it. A devoted coffee lover, he spent more than a decade in the US, studying finance and economics, working as a consultant, and immersing himself in the country’s speciality coffee culture.

His partner, Namrata Asthana, shared his love for coffee. Also educated in the US, with a background in communications, she held roles at PepsiCo India, the Centre for Finance and Development and the American India Foundation.

When the couple returned to India and settled in Delhi, they were struck by a curious disconnect. The country grows some of the world’s finest coffee beans, yet few Indians can access high-quality brews. The robust flavours of South Indian filter coffee or the delightful Arabica blends were difficult to come by at affordable mom-and-pop cafés.

Determined to change that indifferent coffee culture and low engagement, they set up Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters in 2013. The name — drawn from an old Malabari word for a peacock’s tail — evokes the beauty and complexity the founders want to bring to every cup of speciality brew.

India’s coffee culture grew at two extreme ends of the spectrum 12 years ago. One could find off-the-shelf regular coffees — pre-ground beans and instant mixes — from brands like Nescafé and Bru. It was convenient but lacked the soul. On the other end was the vibrant but expensive café culture shaped by Café Coffee Day (CCD) and Barista. In between, a few homegrown brands like The Indian Bean, Seven Beans and Flying Squirrel found their toeholds, experimenting with better coffees and mostly selling through word of mouth or early ecommerce channels.

However, speciality coffees (think of cold brews or exotic concoctions of fruits, nuts and chocolate) were either imported and sold at a premium or new-age brands adopted a kind of Glenmorangie culture, nurturing exclusivity and catering to an eclectic mix of the ‘coffee curious’, expats and a handful of cafés willing to bet on a new wave.

Put together, these factors paved the path for Blue Tokai’s arrival. While researching, the founders realised that the market needed a middle ground, focussing on quality, wider access and pocket-friendly pricing. Undoubtedly, premiumisation sells in the F&B space. But overpriced elitism might not work for a new player in a country where drinking tea has emerged as a vibrant culture for a long time.

The brand took a bold step and entered the market with a powerful vision: Spotlight single-estate Indian coffee, ethically sourced, clearly traceable, freshly roasted and delivered directly to consumers.

The founders launched the mass-premium brand with a D2C website, a Probat roaster installed in their Delhi home (it sold only roasted beans until 2020) and an unwavering focus on quality and transparency. They also brought Shivam Shahi as the third founder and the COO in 2016 to lead café and retail operations.

Today, Blue Tokai has established a robust multichannel footprint across cafés, own website, B2B/corporate partnerships and FMCG Retail. By FY25, it reportedly operated as many as 150+ cafés and plans to open 100 more in the current fiscal year. Interestingly, the brand has a strategic concentration of outlets in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and several Tier I cities.

Blue Tokai’s revenue also climbed steadily — from INR 2 Cr in 2016 to INR 341 Cr (unaudited) in FY25 as claimed by the founder. This reflects a 58% rise over the previous financial year. It’s now targetting INR 1K Cr in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by FY27 and claims the company is growing at 65% YoY to hit that milestone.

Although the brand has yet to post a profit, its founders do not think it is a loss-making venture. “All our business channels are EBITDA-positive,” they claimed. “The only drag comes from central corporate costs — largely fixed investments made to support long-term growth.”

Those costs, they say, have now been absorbed, allowing it to turn a profit at the company level in recent months. “While we have grown at nearly 60%, our EBITDA has improved by about 80% compared to FY24. We are confident this momentum will continue, with meaningful gains in the current fiscal year, and align with our target EBITDA margin of 10-12% by FY27.”

As India’s coffee culture matures and demand grows for convenience and variety, the brand will scale its FMCG retail business (distinct from its D2C operations) by offering a wide range of ready-to-brew and flavoured coffees. The move will sharpen its competitive edge in the fast-growing packaged coffee market (more on this later).

Blue Tokai has raised $60 Mn to date, including $35 Mn in a recent Series C funding in August 2024.

How Blue Tokai Started Brewing A Coffee Revolution

When Chitharanjan and Asthana launched Blue Tokai, building a café chain wasn’t the goal. They simply wanted to fix a long-standing problem: the lack of access to freshly roasted, high-quality Indian coffee with clear traceability. At the time, information on origin, varietals, and processing methods was scarce, and transparency across the supply chain was virtually non-existent.

Speciality coffee in India was a niche — mostly imported, and largely appealing to expats, well-travelled urbanites, and a small set of yoga instructors, food bloggers, and millennial professionals who cared as much about sourcing as they did about taste.

Indian farms and local roasters rarely got attention. Independent labels existed but were scattered, hard to find, and often lacked the digital infrastructure to scale. Ecommerce was still early, and buying beans online — let alone choosing grind sizes or roast profiles — was far from mainstream.

But by 2016, the landscape began to shift. Urban consumers were becoming more conscious, curious, and willing to pay for quality. Blue Tokai’s bet on farm-level sourcing, transparent pricing, and consistent quality started to resonate — turning what was once a niche play into a fast-growing category.

In fact, its near-obsessive commitment to quality and traceability turned out to be the brand’s early and enduring differentiator. It works directly with coffee estates across Chikmagalur and Kodagu (formerly Coorg) in Karnataka and the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu to source Arabica beans, roasting them in-house according to order and shipping them within 24-48 hours. Complete traceability information is provided for each bag of beans, a rarity in the domestic market.

“This is part of our storytelling and branding exercise. Nobody was doing 100% transparent sourcing when Blue Tokai entered the market. But we disclosed the farm name, roast date and the process. It is essential for our business ethos,” said Shahi.

Meanwhile, product design played a subtle but crucial role. In a market saturated with loud, commercial packaging, Blue Tokai’s minimalist outlook, anchored by its hand-drawn peacock plume and earthy tones, felt fresh and refined.

However, turning a coffee startup into a lasting legacy brew would take more than just great beans and sophisticated designs. Hence, a stack of market research, venture capital, new strategies and USPs loomed large behind the next leap.

Building A Chain Of Modular Cafés And Surviving The Pandemic

By 2016, Blue Tokai had a loyal following and modest online traction. It also started to explore physical cafés and B2B partnerships. That was when Shahi joined.

At the time, Blue Tokai generated around INR 2 Cr in annual revenue through online sales and early B2B deals with clients like L’Opéra. The team, including the housekeeping staff, numbered about 10.

Between 2016 and 2020, the founding team experimented with various formats: Kiosks in embassies, In-store/café-in-café models, partnerships with local food outlets and standalone cafés measuring 500-600 sq. ft. “We had no retail experience. So, we learnt on the job and every location became a classroom,” said Shahi.

Their motto? Learn first; scale later.

By 2020, the brand had grown to 27–28 cafés, and most of them were profitable. Additionally, online repeat purchases topped 60%, while Blue Tokai was a category leader on Amazon India. Across all its channels — online, cafés and B2B — the business had a positive cash flow.

The pricing was another deliberate choice, mass-premium rather than luxury. The goal wasn’t to be the most expensive coffee on the shelf but the most trustworthy.

“Our cafés have been consistently priced 30% below premium players,” said Shahi. “We never wanted to be the costliest option. We wanted to be accessible to anyone searching for better coffee minus a premium price tag.”

By early 2020, Blue Tokai had carved a niche in India’s growing urban coffee scene. Then the pandemic hit — cafés shut overnight, revenues plunged, and a near-final funding round was paused.

Despite the setback, sales began to rebound through online orders and takeaways. Within months, the business recovered to 70–80% of pre-Covid levels.

Amid the disruption, Blue Tokai opened 15–16 outlets — a counterintuitive but calculated move to secure prime locations at lower rental costs. While not scaling aggressively, the expansion helped strengthen its retail footprint and position the brand for post-pandemic demand.

The Growth Playbook: Four Key Strategies Driving Blue Tokai

After the pandemic, customers returned for takeouts and indulged in the café culture. Zomato and Swiggy orders surged. In FY21, the company clocked INR 41 Cr in revenue, which climbed to INR 240 Cr in three years. The growth was not serendipitous.

It was driven by strategically located modular cafés — pre-fabricated, standardised units designed for easy assembly and relocation — alongside an FMCG portfolio push and what Shahi called “an omnichannel strategy driven by deep insights into consumer behaviour”. Here is a quick look at what is fuelling the momentum at Blue Tokai.

Smart cafés power speed, efficiency and scale. In the post-pandemic landscape, Blue Tokai has doubled down on its café strategy, focusing on efficiency, scale and tech integration. “Around 90% of our outlets are now modular,” said Shahi. “Plus, we found a sweet spot, around 500 sq. ft, which is cosy, compact and high on user experience.”

These smaller, standardised outlets slash capital expenditure, accelerate rollouts and allow the brand to tap into high-density urban neighbourhoods. The team had earlier tested a variety of formats, from expansive cafés to compact kiosks, before zeroing in on what worked.

“That experimentation phase taught us a lot,” the COO said. “Roughly, 70% of our café playbook is now standardised. Not to set an industry benchmark, but because it works for us.”

The payoff is speed and scale. If profitability holds, the brand plans to open 100 cafés annually, targeting 250+ outlets by FY26 and surpassing 350 ahead of a planned IPO in FY27. The café business is estimated to generate 70-75% of its total revenue.

However, scaling up is not just about numbers. Blue Tokai is banking on a modular structure and digital technologies to create cutting-edge, customised cafés with an independent vibe where size, layout and service formats will be market- and location-specific. For instance, coffee drinkers visiting an outlet in the middle of a crowded commercial hub may prefer high-volume automated systems, while people visiting a suburban outlet may appreciate baristas to focus more on their favourite brews and impeccable customer services.

The brand has also integrated tech solutions with its café pods to streamline services and elevate the in-café experience. It uses digital platforms for pre-ordering coffee and managing takeaways, reducing wait times and adding convenience.

Select outlets also feature digital screens that share details on coffee origins and brewing methods, offering a more immersive, educational experience and underscoring the brand’s commitment to transparency.

Push to grow the FMCG portfolio gains ground. “We were always a bean-first brand. From 2013 until the pandemic, that’s all we sold,” explained Shahi. “After that, we began innovating and offered equipment and beverage varieties to ensure convenience and accessibility.”

For example, Easy Pours, a single-serve drip coffee sachet, became an instant hit among younger, urban customers working from home. Next, the brand introduced cold brew cans, instant speciality coffee and coffee pods, all designed to simplify the brewing process while maintaining flavour and quality.

A broader mission is also driving this growth. With larger packs and ready-to-drink formats, Blue Tokai aims to reach a wider audience via digital platforms and retail shelves to make Indian speciality coffee more accessible.

Although smaller than its café business, the FMCG arm of Blue Tokai is now emerging as the second biggest revenue channel, which is scalable and distribution-friendly. It currently generates INR 80-90 Cr annually and could be on track to overtake the café business within three years.

Interestingly, Blue Tokai has quietly integrated a bakery unit across its café and FMCG operations, expanding its food offerings. In 2025, it has started building a manufacturing unit in Bengaluru to ramp up its roasting and packaging capacity. The facility will cater to café and FMCG demand, tighten supply chain control and accelerate deliveries, particularly in South India. The investment underscores the company’s operational readiness as it eyes aggressive expansion in retail and café formats in the next two years.

Online-offline moat, social media & omnichannel provide a competitive edge. While its offline cafés drive foot traffic and remain a core revenue generator, the brand’s active social media presence bolsters its visibility in lesser-known localities. On platforms like Instagram and Facebook, Blue Tokai announces new outlets, promotes events, and builds the community, keeping audiences engaged and boosting their anticipation.

Instead of pouring money into advertising, the brand hosts seven to eight monthly events such as music festivals and art shows, fostering direct engagement with its core audience. The strategy leans heavily on organic brand-building over paid promotion.

Accordingly, Blue Tokai’s D2C operations remain lean, with minimal marketing spend. “We are not a marketing-first brand. Product and service quality drive everything here. Our repeat rate is our brand moat,” said Shahi.

But what sets it apart is an unbeatable omnichannel strategy, with a seamless presence across touchpoints — from Amazon carts to airport lounges, physical outlets and corporate pantries. Its D2C website, app, cafés and partnerships with platforms like BigBasket, Blinkit and Zomato form an interconnected distribution ecosystem.

“But we are not done yet. There are still a lot of cards we have not played,” said Shahi.

Early-mover advantage spur category creation, consumer training & farmer support. Over the past decade, India’s coffee culture has undergone a striking transformation. Once dominated by ubiquitous instant brews and legacy chains, the landscape is now brimming with competition, nuance and evolving tastes. New-age brands like Sleepy Owl, Rage and Third Wave are riding this wave, but Blue Tokai, an early pioneer in speciality coffee, helped shape this change.

With a first-mover advantage in the farm-to-cup model, the brand has stayed ahead by controlling every stage of the process: Sourcing, roasting, investing in R&D, adopting the D2C model and designing its offbeat cafés. “We have built this category collectively,” said Shahi modestly.

To deepen its engagement, Blue Tokai has focussed on consumer education through workshops, barista training and in-café events to make speciality coffee more of an everyday affair.

It also nurtures a giveback culture by actively supporting farmers. Blue Tokai has set up a growers’ co-operative to bypass intermediaries as part of its sustainability and social equity commitment. The co-op helps farmers secure better prices and strengthens sourcing benchmarks.

The initiative has deepened the brand’s ties with coffee planters and underscores its emphasis on transparency and traceability. It is about making a difference together, a business approach often embraced by new-age ‘woke’ consumers.

The Road To INR 1K Cr Milestone

What is the future of speciality coffee in India? Will it remain an expensive, niche offering or enter the mainstream in a big way? No doubt there is enough competition even here, not only from leading brands like Blue Tokai and its peers but also from relatively new or smaller players like Chelvies and Subko Coffee. However, each brings its own USP in terms of convenience, tech-led experiences and differentiated taste/flavour profiles, and the number of unique brews is escalating fast.

In the premium segment, no one can ignore Starbucks, the deep-pocketed global coffee giant with its many offerings. But as Blue Tokai points out, craft coffee is no longer a niche (and expensive) indulgence. It is emerging as a daily ritual that can be both high-quality and accessible. Its founders also believe India does not need to mimic Western café culture. Instead, it can forge its unique path, where sourcing integrity, roasting expertise and consistent quality define the craft instead of exclusivity.

“We want to be the bridge between growers and everyday consumers who are curious but not elitist,” Asthana told the media in an earlier interview. This perspective shapes the brand’s business ethos, creating a distinct space between commercial-grade coffee and prohibitively expensive international blends.

The market, too, is favourable, as Indians are drinking a lot more coffee than before. The country consumes 1 Lakh tonnes of coffee internally, according to latest industry reports, but on average, 30 cups of coffee is annually consumed by an Indian compared to the global average consumption of 200 cups. This reveals a huge potential for market growth. Add to that the rise in purchase power and growing awareness of quality products among Indian consumers, and one sees a massive opportunity for local players dealing in speciality coffee.

Blue Tokai is targeting INR 1K Cr in topline revenue by FY27. But unlike brands that go blitzscaling, depend on big marketing campaigns or pursue acquisitions to diversify or scale, Blue Tokai has stayed grounded in a quality-first, fully transparent model and sought organic growth. Its progress hinges on steady execution, operational control and a deep understanding of its customers, principles it followed from Day 1.

“We are not looking to out-market anyone. We want our coffee to do the talking,” said Shahi. “That’s why we prefer to build from scratch. That way, we can control quality and keep our promise consistent.”

Better still, each revenue channel, whether cafés, FMCG retail, leasing or global expansion, is adopted only after internal pilots and thorough testing. Although Blue Tokai clocked a 58% revenue growth in FY25, it resists hasty category expansions or a product overload. Its focus remains clear: Serve a defined audience with consistent coffee and coherent messaging.

The ambition isn’t just to scale. It is to shape how India consumes and relates to speciality coffee over the long term, step by step.

Blue Tokai entered the global market in 2024, opening its first café in Tokyo. Again, it was not a random decision. Japan’s deep and evolving coffee culture and attention to detail align well with the brand’s lasting values. After a year of groundwork, including community engagement, tasting sessions and feedback gathering, Blue Tokai made a cautious launch. As of now, it is treating Japan as a test market rather than a springboard for rapid global rollout.

An IPO timeline has not been announced yet, but the leadership has made its intent clear: Build a fundamentally strong, brand-led business capable of going public by the end of this decade.

“It is not about chasing the listing. It is about building something that deserves to be listed,” according to Shahi. Until then, the focus remains on sustainable growth, profitability, and governance — pillars that support a public market narrative.

[Edited By Sanghamitra Mandal]

The post Inside Blue Tokai’s 4-Point Playbook To Hit INR 1,000 Cr Revenue By FY27 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

While running a garment manufacturing unit for six years, producing shirts for global fashion giants like Zara, S.Oliver UK, Mango, and Marks & Spencer Poland, Harsh Somaiya wasn’t thinking about launching a brand. But his wife, Tanvi, a NIFT graduate who managed the factory’s sampling department, sparked a turning point.

“She used to make samples for brands like Zara and Mango,” Harsh recalled. “When we presented those samples, they bought them. That’s where we got the Eureka moment. We thought, if global brands are buying what we’re creating, why can’t we build something of our own, in India, for the Indian market?”

That realisation led to the launch of The Bear House in 2017 — a menswear brand built not on marketing burn, but on deep operational insight. Harsh used his manufacturing experience to build what is today an INR 140 Cr apparel brand for men.

At the time, their factory was still operational, and the duo took a deliberate approach: identifying a market gap, defining the product’s identity, and testing designs before committing to scale. Harsh observed that while most brands were chasing bold prints and occasion wear, few were addressing the everyday essentials, the Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-9 wardrobe that forms the backbone of a man’s closet.

With shirts already being the factory’s strength, the Somaiyas decided to begin with flannel styles. They designed 50 shirts and listed them on marketplaces. “The response was mind-blowing. The whole lot was sold within two months,” Harsh said.

This initial success spurred them to experiment and expand in India’s $32.32 Bn menswear market, projected to grow at 3.35% annually through 2029. They soon launched wardrobe staples like Oxford checks and poplin shirts — all of which sold out quickly.

The founders noticed a 65% repeat purchase rate early on. By the time the brand turned one, three pillars of growth had crystallised: quality, brand identity, and pricing. And all of it was rooted in their original edge — operational control and product-first thinking.

How Operational Expertise Gave The Bear House Supply Chain Control

Unlike most brands these days, where the marketers become founders without any production knowledge, Harsh handled developing the brand differently. Backed by his experience in manufacturing and over six years of managing a factory, Harsh entered the domain with the required insight into production and supply chain management. 

While most brands stressed on marketing and outsourced production without truly realising the product complexities, Harsh chose to play a different game. He built the business around the product itself. “We didn’t invest much in marketing,” he said. “Instead, we reaffirmed our belief in the product we made.”

With a strong supply chain in place, Somaiyas were able to rein in costs, set up strict quality control, and dish out high-end products at competitive prices. In contrast to most brands that were suffering losses early on attempting to force sales through advertising, The Bear House was EBITDA positive (+25%) from day one, claimed the founder.

This operational edge helped the startup roll out designs rapidly, hedged it from frequent stockouts, and aided in attracting customers without heavy marketing burn. The company introduces more than 200 styles every month. 

While most brands flounder after their first product launch, failing to coordinate the second cycle of production, either due to cash flow squeezes or supply bottlenecks, The Bear House ensured end-to-end control over the supply chain. They had long-term fabric vendor contracts from across the country, factory alliances, and a seasoned in-house quality team. “All these were built during my initial years of the manufacturing business,” Harsh said.

The operational efficiency helped The Bear House price its shirts at INR 340 to INR 350, whereas the production cost for a typical trading-driven brand would be INR 600 to INR 700. “The affordable pricing and consistent quality helped us to not only survive but also grow into an INR 140 Cr D2C brand,” Harsh said. Since the company is yet to file its full financials for FY25, the founder only disclosed the revenue figure at INR 140 Cr. “We’re looking at an INR 1,000 Cr revenue by 2030.”

How The Bear House Learned A Lesson In Managing The Control

In the early days of business, The Bear House bit off more than it could chew. “We were tempted by the initial success. We got carried over,” Harsh said.  

In a desire to grow faster, the Somaiyas tried to aggressively ramp up production, taking on more orders, putting in more capacity, and expanding into domestic markets. “We had excess capacity and to utilise it, we began to take domestic orders, sometimes even making losses. Domestic players would not pay on time, and the cash-flow crisis struck us severely,” Harsh said.

What had begun as a successful export-oriented business soon fell into an eddy. In 2019, the founders were forced to close down the factory, weighed down under a INR 25 Cr loan. Harsh described the incident as the turning point in his entrepreneurial career. “We learned never to stretch ourselves too thin. We realised that every risk had to be measured and every expansion had to be rationalised.” 

After the setback, Harsh redirected his entire attention to venturing into India’s booming D2C market, driven by continued innovation and the emergence of new players. The expected growth of D2C fashion from $29 Bn to $112 Bn by 2030 reinforced Harsh’s decision to enter the market. 

The lessons learned helped Harsh in sharpening his focus on developing the D2C brand. “We decided that there would be no running after vanity metrics, no hasty expansion and no over-spending. Instead, the emphasis would be on creating a slow, steady, and sustainable brand, one that knew its customers inside out, delivered reliably, and remained profitable from day one,” he said. 

How A Marketplace-Focussed Approach Fostered An INR 140 Cr Business

Funding was a major challenge for the bootstrapped business when it entered the D2C market. And Harsh was hell-bent on not diluting equity prematurely or becoming overly dependent on marketing. “We wanted the product to do the talking,” he said. “We built a loyal customer base, step by step.”

The D2C brand stayed focussed on its vision and entered the first round of funding only after it had reached the growth stage. JM Financial Group’s investment arm JM Financial Private Equity led an infusion of INR 50 Cr (around $5.8 Mn) into the startup in a Series A round. 

According to the founder, the company’s operational efficiency kept the startup profitable despite being bootstrapped. In FY24, the D2C menswear brand posted INR 96 Cr revenue from operations and INR 11.1 Cr profit, as per filings with the Registrar of Companies. This was a sharp growth in its real metrics as the startup had closed FY23 with INR 53.6 Cr operating revenue and INR 1.21 Cr revenue. The startup closed FY25 at INR 140 Cr, Harsh claimed, adding that in terms of the net profit, it is at about 18% EBITDA. The company is now looking to reach INR 250 Cr revenue in FY26. 

What drove The Bear House’s sustained profitability? It stemmed from the brand’s early and strategic focus on online marketplaces. Starting with Jabong, The Bear House rapidly expanded across Flipkart, Myntra, Ajio, Nykaa, and Tata Cliq. From the outset, the plan was to scale quickly through these platforms while keeping operational costs in check.

“We were a marketplace-first brand. The business took off quickly, month-on-month, even though our team was still lean,” said Harsh.

For almost four years from 2018, The Bear House concentrated exclusively on marketplace development. It was only in March 2022 that the founders created their own D2C website, followed by rolling out retail stores in February 2024.

The brand’s income today is dominated by sales through marketplaces – about 85% – while 13–14% comes from the D2C platform and an increasing 1% from the retail outlets. In marketplaces, Myntra takes the lead, generating around 40% of the revenue, followed by Flipkart at 28%, and Ajio at 25%. The rest comes from the likes of Tata Cliq and Nykaa.

With two retail stores live and 12 more signed up, The Bear House is now homing in on the offline market, evolving from a marketplace-first brand to a true omnichannel business. “Our roots are in marketplaces, but now we’re ready to build a more balanced, multi-channel brand,” Harsh said.

How The Bear House Maps Its Way Forward To INR 1,000 Cr Revenue

After setting up a strong foundation in marketplaces and D2C channels, The Bear House has entered its next phase of growth, betting big on offline retail and overseas expansion. The Bear House plans to operate only through company-owned, company-operated (COCO) stores. “We’re ready to invest in customer satisfaction. By owning and operating the stores ourselves, we believe we can deliver better service, which should ultimately drive stronger sales,” Harsh said.

In 2024 alone, The Bear House plans to open 20 stores across India. After launching two stores each in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the brand has signed up for locations in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Guwahati, while Gujarat and Jaipur are also on the radar.

On the global front, The Bear House has gone live across five online platforms in Dubai and is gearing up to roll out the brand in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar.

The company’s larger vision is clear: reaching INR 1,000 Cr in revenue by 2030 and then going public with the brand. “We have drawn up a five-year roadmap for the brand. Once we reach the target topline of INR 1,000 Cr, we will explore the option of a public float,” Harsh said.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

The post How This D2C Brand Stitched Together An INR 140 Cr Profitable Menswear Business appeared first on Inc42 Media.