Venture Capital

The platform is currently used by enterprises such as Paytm, MakeMyTrip, ServiceNow, and Dalmia Cement, with support for more Indian languages in development.

TAM doesn’t matter. I don’t track it, that is an analyst’s job, says Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal

Even if it is Rs 5,000 crore, we can give vision to 50 percent of India and that is a sizable impact to create and so our job is not changing because of that, Peyush Bansal, CEO and co-founder, Lenskart, told Moneycontrol in an interview.

Accel and Prosus to co-invest in former’s early-stage founder programme Atoms X

Prosus will match Accel’s investment in each company. Earlier each company would get around $250,000 to $1 million in funding but now they’ll be able to raise around $500,000 to $2 million at the early stage.

Following the Smart Money: What Q3 VC funding reveals about AI dominance, India's innovation gap

Following venture capital flows is like reading a map of the future, and right now, all roads lead to artificial intelligence

UnifyApps raises $50 million led by WestBridge Capital to help enterprises scale genAI

With the fresh funding, the enterprise AI platform plans to expand globally, deepen product integrations, and accelerate platform development as it positions itself as the ‘operating system’ for AI-native enterprises.

India Quotient raises $129 million in Fund 5 to bet on early-stage startups

India Quotient has also promoted two of its executives, Kanika Agarrwal and Sahil Makkar, to the position of partner

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to expand India presence with local hire

While Mint reported a16z would set up an office in India, the VC fund's general partner, Anish Acharya denied those developments. "As much as I adore India and the many impressive founders+investors in the region, this is entirely fake news," he said on his X account.

Tough luck? Astrotalk’s $100 million deal with Hornbill Capital comes unstuck over NSFW content flagged during due diligence

"All this is completely baseless as we never signed any term sheet with any investor," Anmol Jain, co-founder, Astrotalk, said in response to Moneycontrol's detailed queries.

Fidelity-backed VC firm Eight Roads Ventures consolidates Asia investments, lets go of a dozen executives

It is also likely Fidelity, the sole limited partner of Eight Roads Ventures, will become the anchor of fund and ask other LPs to co-invest in the startup, moving away from the original strategy

Lucio raises $5 million to build AI-native workspace for lawyers

Adopted by more than 200 organisations globally, including enterprise law firms, in-house legal teams, and boutique firms, Lucio currently supports over 3,000 lawyers in nine jurisdictions.

Babycare quick commerce startup Ozi raises $3.3 million in seed funding from Blume Ventures

The fresh capital will help Ozi expand beyond Gurugram and scale its catalogue, as investor interest in vertical quick commerce continues to grow

VCs tap startup operators to sharpen investment game

As India’s venture ecosystem matures, industry stakeholders say funds are racing to bring in domain specialists who can offer sharper execution, deeper founder networks and on-ground operating muscle.

Hocco scoops up Rs 115 crore from Sauce.vc at Rs 2,000 crore valuation

Flush with funds, the premium ice cream brand has stepped up capacity expansion and distribution push.

Vedantu raises $11 million in fresh funding from existing investors, gears up for external secondary round

The round is part of a larger ongoing fundraise, with the company preparing for an external tranche that will include a 'significant secondary component' to offer exits for some early investors, including Chinese backers such as TAL Education and Legend Capital

Oolka bags $7 million in funding from Lightspeed, Z47, 8i Ventures to scale AI credit platform

The Bengaluru-based fintech startup has processed over Rs 100 crore in repayments and is nearing 2 million users; funds will be used to expand its team and launch AI-native credit tools.

Climate-tech startup Equilibrium raises $3 million in seed funding from Peak XV, Kalaari, Avaana

The capital will be used to expand eight projects across nine states, covering 120,000 hectares of land and involving over 150,000 smallholder farmers

WestBridge leads $40 million round in Flipkart-backed FinBox to expand B2B digital lending platform

Of the $40 million, $35 million went directly into the company’s coffers in the form of primary capital and the remaining $5 million was through secondary share sales where early angels exited to make way for new investors.

Over a dozen AI startups in India set to raise seed rounds amid surge in investor appetite

A bulk of the startups negotiating deals are developing AI agents or are creating tools to facilitate their development. Investors are also spending time on AI companion companies, sources told Moneycontrol.

Former IndiaAI mission advisor Aakrit Vaish to launch Activate, an AI fund with a $75 million corpus

General Catalyst, Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Harsh Jain of Dream 11 are among the notable limited partners (LPs) of the fund, sources told Moneycontrol. Activate has already signed its first term sheet.

Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC closes maiden fund at over Rs 200 cr to back pre-seed startups

AJVC has already invested in 25 startups across AI and consumer technology and plans to back 60–70 more teams from this fund.

Porter raises another $110 million in extended round at $1.2 billion valuation

The company will use the funds to double down on the two-wheeler local logistics service space as competition with Rapido, Uber and others heats up

India’s deep tech push gets $1 bn boost from Indian and US VCs, first bets already in play

The alliance seeks to bridge long-standing capital gaps in deep tech by channelling funds into high-cost, high-impact areas such as semiconductors, AI, robotics, space, defense, and medical devices.

Venturi Partners marks first close of second fund at $150 million to back consumer brands

The firm had previously targeted raising $130 million for its first close, when it announced its $225 million Fund II in March this year.

Peak XV Partners' Harshjit Sethi quits amid leadership churn

He is the latest to quit after Shailesh Lakhani, Piyush Gupta and others left over the past year or so.