Tracking pre-seed and seed rounds that close in India every week
Links out to the the websites of the startup and its investors, along with LinkedIn profiles of the founders and fundraising news.
Healthy snacks - protein bars and protein milkshakes. $2M seed, including Sim&San (law firm), angels. Founders Ankit and Gayatri are the founders of ice cream brands Hocco and Huber & Holly, Gayatri is a nutritionist by training. Comps: The Whole Truth (Sauce, Z47, Sofina), The Yoga Bar (Fireside, acquired by ITC).
AI-powered construction monitoring platform that transforms 360-degree helmet-mounted site videos into intelligent, time-stamped virtual walkthroughs, enabling real-time visibility, collaboration and progress tracking across construction projects. Pilots done, exploring India and the US market. Seed round, amount undisclosed. Founder Yash (IIT Bombay, Cornell) is from Beacon Associates, a civil contractor.
AI-driven end-to-end vacation planning solution. In beta - 50 vacations taken, 70 at the planning stage - by customers so far. Seems to be an affiliate - booking is off platform (TBC). $550K pre-seed round. The three founders are from from the Pune Institute of Computer Technology and built GigIndia together (B2B on-demand task completion, acquired by PhonePe). Comps: Holiday Tribe (GSF, Powerhouse), 30Sundays (InfoEdge).
Daily savings app in beta mode, for self employed individuals earning ₹30-70K (~$350-800), looking to save/invest ₹50-200 a day in debt mutual funds. Savings is an entry wedge - "in the fintech space, it is difficult to sell savings as a product to end users, making customer acquisition difficult. Once we manage to scale the product, we will look into expanding our offerings to include a bouquet of financial products. These may include partially secured lending, FDs, credit cards, among others". $4M seed round, including Abhiraj Bhal (Urban Company); Sunil Prabhune (L&T); Abhinav Sinha, Maninder Gulati (OYO). All three founders are IIM, IIT and ex-BCG, with stints at OYO and Urban Company.
Animal and plant nutrition products, made from insects. Fundraise towards building a Black Soldier Fly factory (i.e., a facility dedicated to rearing Black Soldier Fly larvae) that will process 150 tonnes of feedstock on a daily basis; and global expansion. ₹32CR (~3.8M) seed round. Other investors in the round: Blume Founders Fund, Nitin Sharma (Nexus), Sameer Brij Verma (Northpoint), Anchit Gupta (Samara), David Chen (Equilibrium Capital). Founders: Siddharth (BITS/Kellogg) comes from Intact Infosys (a system integrator); Shivali (TERI, Humbodlt Fellow- Leibniz University) is a waste management expert. Comps: Loopworm (WaterBridge, Omnivore), Arthro Biotech (not funded).
Fashion brand, Thiruvananthapuram based. Fun shirts and sarees, here: https://www.mydesignation.com. $1.25M seed, including Dominor Investment Holdings, Green Trunk Ventures. Husband-wife duo Swaroop and Gopika have bootstrapped for eights years, out of college.
AI-powered visa application platform - 1.5 lakh visas processed so far. Available on its own website and embedded into partners like ixigo and SpiceJet. $2M seed round, other investors include Thinkuvate. Founders: Vijayendra (ex-Zomato, ixigo, MobiKwik) was most recently VP of International Sales at White Hat Jr, while Dhruv is a software engineer from MobiKwik. Comps: StampThePassport (angels), Atlys (A16Z, Peak XV, Elevation, DST). How is this space evolving? This February, Atlys acquired the UK subsidiary of Artionis, a Swiss outsourcing partner for governments worldwide. Beyond visas, Atlys now provides eSIMs, forex and travel insurance.
AI-powered "Product Experience Management" platform. Online sellers can create, manage and distribute product listings across channels - with automated catalog creation, product listing updates and visual content generation. Pre-seed round, amount undisclosed. Angels in the round: Sangeet Agarwal and Navin Parval (Mokobara), Rohin Mittal (AdYogi). Founders: Himanshu is ex-Reliance Retail and P&G; Ankit and Vipin are ex-AdYogi. All three worked together at ANS (Flipkart). Comps: some overlap with Phot.AI (InfoEdge, Together, AC Ventures), which focuses on the visuals for cataloging.
Agentic AI driven test orchestration platform. Pre-seed round, amount undisclosed. The three founders worked together at Ally.io (acquired by Microsoft) and then at Microsoft. Investment thesis captured here: https://eximiusventures.medium.com/why-we-invested-in-devassure-503e7e528c2e
Construction materials marketplace: connects US contractors and distributors directly with vetted manufacturers, offering integrated logistics, quality control and financing. AI is used for pricing predictions, lead-time optimisation and supplier recommendations. $750K pre-seed round. Founders: Harsh built product at US construction tech startup Katerra; Nasir, Raghav and Shubham (not listed here) are from OfBusiness.