Premium sneaker brand designed through the lens of Indian culture. Sold D2C, now establishing its own exclusive brand outlets. ₹7.6CR seed round, along with ₹1.1CR raised in venture debt from Stride Ventures. Angels in the round: Vivekananda Hallekere (Bounce), Suhasini Sampath (Yogabar), Nishchay AG (Jar), Ashutosh Valani (Renee Cosmetics) and more. Founders: Arjun comes from Graph Advisors (back office for fund managers), OnDeck, J.P. Morgan; Animesh is from Bain and E&Y. Both are from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology. Comps (funded shoe brands): Neeman's (Sixth Sense, Anicut); Comet (Elevation, Nexus); Yoho (Gulf Islamic Investments, Rukam, Rajeev Misra (SoftBank)).

Homegrown brand for pickleball gear. US Pickleball Association certified pickleball paddles are sold at ₹7,000-9,000 - almost half the price of international brands. "Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in India, yet access to quality, affordable gear remains limited". Seed round of an undisclosed amount. Investors: Manish Poddar ( Rare Rabbit), Pratham Mitta (Tetr), Malika Sadani (The Moms Co.). Founded by "a diverse team of students from the US, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, and India while studying at Tetr College of Business". Comps: GoRally runs pickleball courts (Bharat Founders Fund).

Programmable banking and card infrastructure to "launch your fintech within a month". Offers APIs and infrastructure for credit cards, prepaid cards and forex programs, so regulated entities can launch digital credit products with speed, compliance and reliability. In addition to infra, a no code platform allows its customers to launch their own banking app within days; along with tools to drive down CaC. $1.85M pre-seed round. Angels in the round: Kunal Shah (CRED), Sayandeb Banerjee (The Math Company) , Suresh Rayasam (GTM), Ravi Sudhakar (Microsoft). Founders: the CEO had data science roles at Uber and Linkedin; the CTO was co-founder at Stree (women's health companion) and worked at BNP Paribas, AMP (Australia) and Wipro. Both worked at Mu Sigma.

Connects travelers with passionate local guides. Tackling "three deep-rooted travel challenges: fragmented planning, superficial connections, and post-trip memory loss". Pre-seed round of an undisclosed amount at a ₹15CR valuation. The three founders started this out of IIT Delhi last year.

SportsTech startup with a mobile app that standardises sports assesments for young athletes and delivers data-based feedback to improve their athletic potential. Benchmarking tools are in line with globally accepted frameworks. It then connects these athletes with scouts from Indian and global leagues, along with sponsors. Coaches and parents get to track progress in real time. $1M round. Other investors in the round: M Pallonji, Jeena and Co., Ayaz Billawala, Nimesh Kampani, Jaimin Bhat (ex-Kotak). Founders: the CEO was Head of Engineering, GetMega; the CTO was an Android Engineer at the same startup; the third co-founder was a Managing Partner at Thermotech (transformer components). Comps: SportsSkill (Waimea Bay Investments); KIBI Sports (angels).

Data security for Gen AI apps. Gives IT and security teams visibility into how AI is used across enterprises. Unbound's infras makes AI safe, observable and governable within large organisations. Their main product, Unbound AI Gateway, integrates with tools like Cursor, Roo, Cline, and internal copilots. "Defaulting to blanket bans on AI tools is like being in the times of GPT-3.5," notes CTO Subbiah. "Unbound introduces surgical security controls into every AI request so teams can innovate without compromising sensitive data." $4M seed round. Other investors in the round: Massive Tech Ventures, Northside Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Pioneer Fund, Ram Shriram and others. Founders: the CEO started out at Datamattic and Adobe in Bengaluru, followed by Imperva and Palo Alto Networks in the Bay Area - and is also a Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund. His co-founder was at Adobe for seven years followed by Tophatter. Both founders are PSG College of Technology alumni. Comps: Singulr AI (Nexus, Dell).

Home cleaning products in concentrate format that are non-toxic and more environmentally friendly (water takes up 90% of the volume in cleaning liquids). 150K customers served so far, across D2C, Quick Commerce and eCommerce. The company will also look at select international markets. $1M seed round. Other investors in the round: Utsav Somani (iSeed), Suhail Sameer (OTP), Sumit Jalan, Ajay Kumar (Action Tesa Group), Alok Mittal (Indifi). Founders: Mayank founded Rusabl (D2C brand with a similar product range); Karan worked at Muktha Laboratories.

Marketplace for secondhand luxury fashion. The platform lists 10,000 products from global brands and provides authentication in-line with global comps (think Vestaire Collective) - every item comes with a authenticity certificate. Tata CLiQ Luxury collaborated with the company last year to offer a curated range of pre-owned handbags. Seed round of an undisclosed amount. The two co-founders, Ashri and Varun, started Ziniosa close to eight years ago. Comps: Confidential Couture, My Almari (neither are funded).

Wealth management firm to give access to - as the name suggests - alternative investments. Claims to have onboarded 100 HNI clients. ₹1CR seed round from undisclosed family offices. Founders: the CEO had a brief stint at Client Associates and as a Wealth Advisor to the founder of "one of India largest gaming company's"; the other co-founder was at Client Associates for close to five years.

SpaceTech - developing electric propulsion systems to enable longer duration sattelite missions in Ultra Low Earth Orbit (ULEO) - i.e. below 250 kms altitude. ULEO has traditionally remained largely inaccessible due to high atmospheric drag and fuel constraints. LEO itself (500-700km altitude) is a crowded space - both in terms of competitors as well as space debris. Orbitt's propulsion system uses residual atmospheric gases as propellant instead of carrying traditional fuel. $1M pre-seed round. The fundraise will go towards a first space demo mission by mid 2026. Both founders are ex-ISRO scientists from its Space Applications Centre - working at ISRO the last eight years before starting Orbitt Space this February.