Surat-based startup DhiWise has pivoted to a fully AI-first company under the brand Rocket.new and raised $15 million in a seed round led by Salesforce Ventures and Accel with participation from Together Fund.
It will use the capital to strengthen R&D, expand product capabilities, and establish a global footprint with new headquarters in Palo Alto, California, the company said on September 23.
Founded by Vishal Virani, Rahul Shingala, and Deepak Dhanak, Rocket is an AI-powered app-building platform that enables users to turn plain English prompts into fully functional, production-ready applications.
Unlike most artificial intelligence tools that generate code snippets or mockups, Rocket delivers end-to-end build capabilities from UI and backend to integrations and scaling.
Rocket is the next chapter of DhiWise.
"We’ve moved from design-to-code utilities to an AI-driven build system. The goal isn’t snippets; it’s shipping real products reliably,” co-founder and CEO Virani told Moneycontrol.
“Over the last two years, users asked us for outcomes, not just assistance. They wanted us to help them ship full solutions faster and maintain them easily. That’s when we realised speed is the moat. Rocket reduces time-to-value from months to days, while keeping quality and security intact."
The shift comes as SaaS startups increasingly rebrand themselves as AI-first companies to capture investor and customer interest.
According to Tracxn, AI-first SaaS deals have surged in 2025, with Accel, Lightspeed, and Peak XV actively backing India-founded firms building for global markets.
Recently, Whatfix, Atlan, and Capillary have all sharpened their AI positioning to secure larger cheques from investors.
Rocket, which launched four months ago, claims 400,000 users across 180 countries and has enabled over 500,000 production-ready apps.
It employs 60 people in Surat and Palo Alto and plans to double its India-based product and engineering teams in the next year.
Virani said Rocket is designed for both startups and enterprises. “Our platform is equally useful for a small business in Brazil trying to build an internal tool or a Fortune 100 company looking for scalable AI-native solutions. The common thread is speed, scale, and reliability,” he said.
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