It sits on your phone like an app and has never once asked for an update.
iPhone
Sarvam AI is reportedly in talks to raise about $300 million in a round that could value it at $3.5 billion to $4 billion, with Cognizant possibly taking a small stake, Inc42 reports citing ET. That is more than double its previous $1.5 billion valuation.
Read more at Inc42 →
Bengaluru social gaming startup Matiks raised $10 million in a pre-Series A round led by General Catalyst, with Ronnie Screwvala, Info Edge Ventures, Tanglin and Untitled Ventures. It plans to expand overseas, build new games and launch an AI powered game creation platform.
Read more at Indian Retailer →
Bengaluru enterprise AI startup QwikBuild raised $2.3 million in a pre-seed round led by Tokyo listed Globalway, with Blume Ventures, DeVC, Marsshot and Groww founder Lalit Keshre. It is setting up a joint venture with Globalway to sell its platform in Japan.
Read more at Indian Startup News →
Healthcare data startup BioStack raised $9.5 million in a seed round led by Peak XV, with Afore Capital, DCVC, Emerson Collective, SV Angel and Y Combinator among others, Siliconindia reports. The money goes to international expansion, its platform and engineering and research hiring.
Read more at Siliconindia →
Traveltech startup Holiday Tribe is in talks to raise about ₹50 crore, with RPSG Capital Ventures among prospective investors, sources told Inc42. The round is not final and its size and investors could change. Neither company responded before publication.
Read more at Inc42 →Vama raised ₹19.03 crore in an ongoing pre-Series A round led by Writers and Publishers, the family office of Dainik Bhaskar, with Wavemaker Partners and others joining, Siliconindia reports. Devotion, it turns out, has a cap table.
Read more at Siliconindia →Cybersecurity firm Protectt.ai has taken a majority stake in AIShield, an AI security platform incubated within Bosch Global Software Technologies, through new shares and a secondary purchase. AIShield will run as an independent Protectt.ai company. The pair pitch it as India's first full stack AI security platform.
Read more at cxodigitalpulse.com →ReplyAll raised ₹9.7 crore in a pre-Series A round co-led by Sadev Ventures and Atom XVII, with ISV, Long View Ventures, Sparrow, Antler and angels. The brand will spend on fabric research, new apparel lines and growing its direct to consumer footprint.
Read more at Siliconindia →Mumbai estate planning company WillJini closed its first external round at a $3.5 million valuation, raising from SPJIMR batchmates, friends and channel partners after three bootstrapped years. It describes itself as India's first and most trusted estate planning company. No VC was harmed in the making.
Read more at India News Network →AI native wealth platform Vouch, founded by former Jane Street and Robinhood product lead Arnav Ghatiwala, raised $500,000 from Y Combinator. It connects to families' existing portfolios, understands goals and helps optimise investments, with human experts involved in key decisions.
Read more at bwdisrupt.com →Bengaluru startup CopperPilot raised $390,000 from Neon Fund and US angels, Analytics India Magazine reports. Founded in October 2025, it is building an AI agent that turns plain English descriptions into manufacturing ready circuit board designs, and tools for schematic capture and layout.
Read more at analyticsindiamag.com →Tracxn's Indic AI report counts 34 Indian companies building AI for Indian languages, with capital concentrated among a handful of players and no late stage round yet. Two Sarvam rounds drove 2026's record inflow, while 2024 saw the most rounds at 15.
Read more at Fortune India →India drew $2.1 billion of agtech capital between 2023 and Q3 2025, over three times second placed Brazil, an AgBase report backed by the Gates Foundation finds. The report tracked $4.39 billion across 900 plus deals in 17 countries.
Read more at global-agriculture.com →Bihar's Shital Kumari is building GomatiRoots, a brand around traditional badi that connects rural women with markets. The startup received ₹1 lakh through YourStory's Shuru Kar initiative and generated ₹32 lakh in revenue in its first financial year.
Read more at YourStory →
Cloud security startup Upwind raised a $400 million Series C at a $3.8 billion valuation led by Bessemer, TechCrunch reports, nine months after a $250 million round at $1.5 billion. The raise nearly fell apart when Datadog tried to buy the company. Upwind preferred the cheque.
Read more at TechCrunch →
San Francisco construction startup Bedrock Robotics raised a $600 million Series C led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, valuing it at $4.1 billion, The Real Deal reports citing Bloomberg. In February it was valued at $1.75 billion after a $270 million round.
Read more at therealdeal.com →
OpenAI published a customer story casting Stockholm legal AI startup Legora as the builder of an "agentic operating system" for legal work. It lands a week after Legora closed a $550 million Series E at an $8.8 billion post-money valuation.
Read more at BigGo Finance →
AI startup Simile raised $300 million to build models that simulate consumer behaviour, CEO Joon Sung Park said on the Sourcery podcast. Users define an audience and question simulated shoppers. CVS is already working with it. Your digital clone has opinions now.
Read more at aol.co.uk →
Casap, whose AI helps banks and card firms handle disputes and chargebacks, raised a $56 million Series B led by Base10 Partners, bringing total funding to $90 million, Fortune reports. Cardholders now account for nearly a third of fraudulent transactions, the piece says.
Read more at Fortune →London robotics AI startup Machenta raised $40 million in seed funding co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures. It builds technology for robots to learn physical tasks in simulated environments rather than through large real world datasets. Funds go to research, hiring and compute.
Read more at newsaffinity.com →Nevis closed a $70 million Series B led by EQT Ventures, with Charles Schwab, Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ, QuantumLight and Ribbit Capital, taking total funding to $110 million in two years. Its platform unites CRM, meeting intelligence and financial planning for wealth firms.
Read more at theaiinsider.tech →Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable is letting employees sell $80 million in shares at the $13.3 billion valuation set in its August Series C, Sifted reports. "The people building Lovable should share in what we're creating," the company says. The full piece is for subscribers.
Read more at Sifted →Easol, a platform for festivals and experience businesses, raised a $30 million Series A extension, $20 million equity from Y Combinator, Tiger Global and others plus $10 million debt from Viola Credit. It launched Teammates, AI that automates sales and support. Total raised is $60 million.
Read more at citybiz.co →Virginia based Numeracle raised $28 million from Edison Partners, Crunchbase News reports. It verifies businesses, links them to the numbers they call from and works to remove wrong spam labels. Total funding since 2018 is $34.8 million. Somebody finally answered.
Read more at news.crunchbase.com →Northstar Security emerged from stealth with $7 million in seed funding led by Wing Venture Capital, with MVP, Outliers and security veterans. It is building an agentic AI platform to find and resolve interconnected cybersecurity risks and will spend on product, hiring and sales.
Read more at pulse2.com →Vitara Agritech, formerly Sommalife, raised $2 million in equity from AgriFI, an EU funded impact facility, alongside Acumen and angels. It will expand sustainable shea sourcing, strengthen supply chain transparency and create more opportunities for women farmers in northern Ghana.
Read more at techinafrica.com →Copenhagen startup Cortas raised about €1.47 million from PSV Tech, JRNY Capital, EIFO and founders of Flatpay and Spirii. It combines property management services with in-house software, using AI and automation for operations, tenant services and financial administration for real estate investors.
Read more at bebeez.eu →Noewe Accounting raised €500,000 from private investor Philip Van Goethem, valuing it at €2.5 million, FinTech Global reports. It is building an AI and automation led accounting service giving SMEs on demand financial data, CFO style insights and tax recommendations.
Read more at fintech.global →
Inovia Capital has held a $200 million first close for Inovia Venture Fund 6. The fund will back AI native companies and those building emerging frontier technologies, building on nearly two decades of the firm's investing in technology founders.
Read more at pulse2.com →
Aavishkaar Group plans at least six deeptech investments by December 31 across technical textiles, agritech, tissue culture, materials and spacetech, Mint reports. Aavishkaar Capital's sixth fund, raised in 2023, has a ₹1,200 crore corpus and writes ₹20 crore to ₹100 crore cheques.
Read more at Mint →
Water technology VC PureTerra Ventures secured a €30 million commitment from the European Investment Fund for PureTerra II, its second fund backing early stage water tech companies mainly in Europe. The commitment is supported by the European Commission's InvestEU programme.
Read more at ESG Today →
Phaze Ventures has secured more than $40 million in commitments for two new funds targeting over $75 million, Oman Observer reports. They will invest in AI and advanced tech internationally, with a separate channel for AI businesses in Oman. Over $10 million is already invested.
Read more at Oman Observer →
Y Combinator published a Crypto Request for Startups naming tokenised assets, new financial instruments, blockchain financial infrastructure and AI agents as key shifts. Priority areas include AI powered fundraising and stablecoins for underserved markets, Crypto Times reports. Applications close soon.
Read more at cryptotimes.io →Investors are moving beyond oncology and nephrology into pain management, physiotherapy and orthotics, Economic Times reports. Bengaluru orthotics maker Lumov is in talks to raise ₹32 crore in a round led by Peak XV Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.
Read more at The Economic Times →India's private equity firms are concentrating capital in established businesses, seeking more say in strategy and focusing on operational change, fund managers told Rediff. Renuka Ramnath noted that spray and pray is a term most people casually use for VC. PE would rather not be most people.
Read more at m.rediff.com →Unicorn India Ventures' US expansion is meant to help portfolio companies scale faster and find quicker exits, founder Bhaskar Majumdar told Mint. "Hopefully, we'll see a shrinking in exit timelines," he said, citing new potential acquirers. Patience, it seems, now has a visa.
Read more at Mint →Ixigo co-founder Rajnish Kumar launched the Made in Fire Fund, a ₹1 crore initiative for graduating IIT Kanpur students. It will back 10 technology led startups from each graduating batch with ₹10 lakh each in non dilutive prototype funding.
Read more at The Economic Times →PhysicsWallah's School of Startups signed a two year MoU with DPIIT to support early stage ventures, especially in Tier II and III cities and rural areas. It combines training and mentoring with prototype development, incubation, investor access and seed capital.
Read more at YourStory →Minneapolis AI and data services firm phData secured new funding from Gryphon Investors with participation from Anthropic. Terms were not disclosed. The money funds hiring and services to help enterprises deploy Claude models. The model maker is now funding its own installers.
Read more at citybiz.co →
Jio Platforms closed its first session at ₹1,417.35 on the BSE, up 26.66% from its ₹1,119 issue price and 4.37% above its ₹1,358 listing price, Inc42 reports. It ended as India's second largest listed company at ₹13.05 lakh crore, behind parent Reliance.
Read more at Inc42 →
Meesho reported a Q2 FY27 net loss of ₹132.44 crore, down 68% from ₹411.36 crore a year earlier, while revenue rose 34%, YourStory reports. Its annual transacting users stand at 284 million and its seller base has grown to 1.13 million.
Read more at YourStory →
Online astrology platform Astrotalk's consolidated net profit rose 895% to ₹222 crore in FY26 as operating revenue grew 55% to ₹1,823 crore, Inc42 reports. Consultations, international markets and ecommerce drove growth. The stars, at least, have been bullish.
Read more at Inc42 →
Naukri parent Info Edge reported Q2 FY27 net profit of ₹649.8 crore, up 87% from ₹347.5 crore, aided by other income that rose 164.8% to ₹428.4 crore. Operating revenue grew 12.2% to ₹903.9 crore. It declared a ₹3 interim dividend.
Read more at Inc42 →
Nazara Technologies' Q2 revenue jumped 53% to ₹803 crore on higher gaming sales, including World Cricket Championship and Human: Fall Flat. It posted a ₹35 crore net profit against a ₹34 crore loss a year earlier, when it took provisions on real money gaming investments.
Read more at The Economic Times →Digital lender Fibe, which has filed its draft prospectus with Sebi, is putting AI at the centre of lending, Mint reports. Its AI scorecard looks at more than 27,000 variables rather than relying mainly on bureau history to judge borrowers.
Read more at Mint →Zerodha earned 32% of FY26 revenue from interest on customer funds, over four times Groww's share, Mint reports, while Angel One earned about 31%. Zerodha posted ₹8,500 crore revenue and ₹4,300 crore net profit as it reduced reliance on broking amid derivatives curbs.
Read more at Mint →CarTrade reported Q2 FY27 net profit of ₹66 crore, up 3% from ₹64.1 crore and 16.2% higher sequentially. Operating revenue grew 10.2% to ₹213.1 crore. Total expenses rose 6% year on year to ₹150.8 crore but dipped from the previous quarter.
Read more at Inc42 →Freshworks has acquired Israel based Robusta, an AI startup that helps companies find the causes of technology outages and recommend fixes. Its incident investigation technology will join Freshservice, Freshworks' IT service management platform. Financial details were not disclosed.
Read more at The Economic Times →Info Edge approved selling its 14.18% stake in MedCords and 31.64% stake in Unnati Online for about ₹5,000 each, Inc42 reports. Both investments had already been fully impaired. Roughly the price of a decent dinner, split two ways.
Read more at Inc42 →Logitech shares fell 10% on Wednesday despite better than expected Q2 profit, wiping about 1.5 billion Swiss francs off its value, Economic Times reports. Analysts cited profit taking and margin concerns. The stock had gained about 12% this year before results.
Read more at The Economic Times →
Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani will return as executive vice chairman, managing director and group CEO from December 3, 2026, after Hitesh Oberoi steps down following 16 years in the role, BusinessLine reports. The founder has reapplied through Naukri, presumably.
Read more at BusinessLine →
Critical minerals firm LOHUM Cleantech has brought in 2010 physics Nobel winner Konstantin Novoselov to lead research in advanced materials and cleaner technology, founder Rajat Verma said. He will helm a new incubator using veteran engineers to lower barriers to industrial manufacturing.
Read more at Mint →
Pepper shifted from selling content to selling discoverability, and its SEO and generative engine optimisation business will soon cross $10 million ARR alone, co-founder Anirudh Singla says. "If your business is simply producing words, AI is going to have a huge impact on it," he said.
Read more at The Economic Times →
Bengaluru's Gnani AI launched Prisma v3.0, a speech to text model trained on Indian telephone audio and code mixed speech in nine languages plus Indian English. It reports a 16.9% word error rate on Vistaar, against 19.98% for ElevenLabs Scribe v2.
Read more at BusinessLine →
On The Brand Equity Show, Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal discusses instant house help, the reality behind advertised earnings of ₹40,000 a month, and his view that Indian home services could reach $100 billion by 2030. Snabbit claims to fulfil 99.3% of bookings.
Read more at The Economic Times →Jaipur baby essentials brand Moms Home grew quick commerce revenue from about ₹1 crore in FY25 to ₹10 crore in FY26, nearly 30% of its ₹35 crore total, Inc42 reports. It separates urgent purchases from considered ones like bedding.
Read more at Inc42 →Pee Safe launched women's wellness brand Within last month, aiming for about ₹100 crore in revenue over three years, co-founder Rithish Kumar told Mint. Within targets gut health and metabolism, a move beyond hygiene. "Women's health needs go well beyond hygiene," Kumar said.
Read more at Mint →A Massimo Bottura dinner at The Leela Palace New Delhi, priced at ₹75,000 plus taxes, sold out in minutes, Mint reports. Hotels increasingly fly in celebrated chefs to win new diners and repeat visits. The bill, too, arrives with stars.
Read more at Mint →Dehradun medtech Sunfox Technologies is making ECGs usable outside hospitals, CEO Rajat Jain told Economic Times, noting most heart attacks happen outside them. Jain, who grew up in a village and lost a college friend to a heart attack, wants earlier detection for remote patients.
Read more at The Economic Times →QClairvoyance's Sai Shankar P told Economic Times the team cut eight molecules into small pieces, solved each on a real IBM quantum computer and joined the answers. He said current machines can already help with chemistry if problems are split small enough.
Read more at The Economic Times →Crunchbase News profiles Lilly Chen, who left high school at 16 to spend about two years as a monk after repeated hospitalisations for Graves' disease, before founding a venture backed company. It is the latest in its series on founders from non-technical backgrounds.
Read more at news.crunchbase.com →Richa Bajpai started NextGen as an engineering student, co-founded corporate volunteering firm Goodera, studied at London Business School and sat on The Creator Fund's investment committee. She then set up Campus Fund, a VC platform for student entrepreneurs and recent graduates.
Read more at Outlook India →Workshaala runs 75,000 seats across 25 centres in 10 Indian cities, about 3.5 million sq ft, YourStory reports. It has set a ₹1,000 crore revenue vision on growing GCC demand and calls a recent deal the world's largest service platform workplace transaction.
Read more at YourStory →Revenue can rise while enterprise value falls, argues a Crunchbase News column. A hypothetical SaaS firm at $15 million ARR and 6x multiple is worth $90 million, but a shrinking multiple can erase the gains, with big implications for M&A timing.
Read more at news.crunchbase.com →Startup roles in India first, then global and remote, checked today. Every listing links to the original posting. Equity is between you and the cap table.
Founder meetups and demo days coming up, each checked against its own page this morning. Bring a one line pitch, then shorten it.
Startup-relevant research on AI, markets and product. Preprints say so on the card. Findings stay where the source put them.
Announce Type: new Abstract: We study time-to-arrival (TTA) in sports: the shortest plausible time a player needs to reach an arbitrary location on the pitch given their current kinematic state, estimated as the lower envelope of observed locomotion times. Rather. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) has become a key mechanism for efficiently specializing foundation models into many task- and user-specific variants. Serving many LoRA adapters under a shared resource budget turns post-hoc compression into a two-level allocation problem. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Evaluating natural language explanations in recommender systems is essential for fostering user trust, transparency, and engagement. However, existing evaluation approaches like human evaluations, while accurate, are resource-intensive and impractical at the scale required by modern recommendation. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Requirements engineering (RE) is foundational to systems engineering (SE), as requirement defects can propagate downstream and adversely affect development outcomes. Although large language models (LLMs) are promising for requirement quality assessment, prior work shows that off-the-shelf. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) perform well across many real-world tasks but remain prone to hallucination, limiting their reliability in domains such as biomedicine and healthcare, where answers must be grounded in established knowledge. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Effective differential diagnosis depends on well structured and unambiguous patient case descriptions, since incomplete or ambiguous clinical information readily leads to diagnostic errors and inconsistent reasoning. Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently shown promising capabilities in. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: GPU clusters have become essential computing resources for AI and scientific research in academia and industry. However, their high cost and growing demand often result in long queueing delays. While previous monitoring efforts have operated at. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on reusable skills for complex software engineering tasks, making skill libraries essential for repository development and maintenance. However, repository-specific skills must evolve with changing code structures, implementation conventions, and. Preprint, not peer reviewed.
Talks for founders and early teams. Each one was still up on YouTube this morning.
How Jeetu Patel Runs Cisco Like the World’s Largest Startup. From Y Combinator, 43 min.
What If We Stopped Using GPUs? | YC Paper Club. From Y Combinator, 1h 20m.
Robot-Use Agents: Why General-Purpose Models May Win in Robotics. From Y Combinator, 29 min.
The State of Startups in 2026. From Y Combinator, 36 min.
Why You're Getting Zero Replies To Your Cold Emails. From Y Combinator, 12 min.