India’s Biggest AI Startups Based on Funding Raised
Growing Indian AI Startup Ecosystem Amid Funding Challenges
22 July 2024
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Savleen Kaur
Despite limited funding compared to the U.S. and Europe, India's AI startup ecosystem is growing, driven by local talent addressing regional problems.
Leading the charge are startups like Krutrim, Sarvam AI, and Mad Street Den, which have secured significant investments and are developing innovative AI solutions.
A wave of emerging AI startups such as Upliance AI, Scribble Data, and Expertia AI are gaining traction, offering specialized AI applications across various
India’s AI startup ecosystem is burgeoning, driven by its vast engineering talent. While funding for Indian AI startups is limited compared to the billions raised by their U.S. and European counterparts, venture capital is increasingly directed toward local talent addressing regional problems.
Key Indian AI Startups and Their Funding
Krutrim
Founder: Bhavish Aggarwal
Funding Raised: $50 million
Key Investors: Matrix Partners India
Led by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, Krutrim (Hindi of Sanskrit origin meaning “artificial”) is India’s first unicorn AI startup, valued at $1 billion on just $50 million of money raised. Launched in December 2023 in Bengaluru, Krutrim is building a large language model (LLM) based on Indian languages and English. Earlier this year, it introduced an AI chatbot, which (not unlike its Western counterparts) saw a backlash upon its public beta launch over inaccurate results. The startup claims its AI model improves through regular updates.
Sarvam AI
Founders: Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar
Funding Raised: $41 million
Key Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peak XV Partners, Khosla Ventures
Sarvam AI (Telugu for “everything”) is India’s other high-profile startup working on LLMs based on Indian languages. The startup was co-founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who both worked previously with tech veteran Nandan Nilekani on IIT Madras’ project AI4Bharat. The Bengaluru-based startup emerged from stealth in December and aims to offer full-stack generative AI offerings, including a platform to let enterprises develop GenAI apps based on Sarvam’s LLM and contribute to open-source models and datasets. In February, Sarvam AI partnered with Microsoft to launch voice-based AI tools and bring its Indic voice LLM
to Azure.
Mad Street Den
Founders: Ashwini Asokan and Anand Chandrasekaran
Funding Raised: $67 million
Key Investors: Avatar Growth Capital, Peak XV Partners, Alpha Wave Global
Computer vision startup Mad Street Den is building AI solutions for enterprise customers. The Chennai-based startup, co-founded by the neuroscientist-designer couple Ashwini Asokan and Anand Chandrasekaran in 2016, initially introduced its vision tech for the retail segment, though it expanded to verticals, including finance, insurance, healthcare, and logistics. Its bigger vision goes beyond its home market, per its mission: “to make people all over the globe A.I natives.”
Wysa
Founders: Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati
Funding Raised: $25 million
Key Investors: HealthQuad, W Health, British International Investment, Google Assistant Fund
Wysa is a mental health tech startup that uses AI to offer an “emotionally intelligent” therapist chatbot that helps users talk through their feelings. Managed by Wysa’s mental health professionals, the chatbot is used by over 6.5 million people across more than 95 countries and diverse age groups. The Bengaluru-based startup, which also has operations in Boston and London, raised $20 million in July 2022. It was co-founded by Jo Aggarwal and her husband, Ramakant Vempati, in 2016 after Aggarwal fell into a deep depression.
Neysa Networks
Founders: Sharad Sanghi and Anindya Das
Funding Raised: $20 million
Key Investors: Matrix Partners India, Nexus Venture Partners, NTTVC
Mumbai-based Neysa Networks is led by seasoned tech entrepreneur Sharad Sanghi, who previously founded cloud and data company Netmagic Solutions. It offers a variety of generative AI platforms and services to businesses to let them deploy AI and machine learning. The startup’s Nebula platform is used to scale AI projects using on-demand GPU infrastructure and train and infer AI models on the cloud. The company’s Palvera platform provides multi-vendor and multi-input observability and lets users preemptively identify issues using a unified data lake and preexisting telemetry datasets. The Aegis platform focuses on AI/ ML security.
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Emerging AI Startups to Watch
Upliance AI
Founders: Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma
Funding Raised: $5.5 million
Key Investors: Khosla Ventures and Draper Associates
Upliance AI brings AI to home appliances to let people cook over 500 new dishes at home. The Bengaluru-based startup plans to raise $10 million to $15 million early next year to bolster its market presence.
Scribble Data
Founders: Venkata Pingali and Indrayudh Ghoshal
Funding Raised: $2.3 million
Key Investor: Blume Ventures
Scribble Data offers domain-specific AI assistants to large North American and European insurers to help them scale their back-end business capacity. It is headquartered in Bengaluru and has a sales team in Toronto.
Expertia AI
Founders: Kanishk Shukla and Akshay Gugnani
Funding Raised: $1.3 million
Key Investors: Chiratae Ventures, Endiya Partners, Entrepreneur First
Expertia AI, based in Bengaluru, helps businesses automate their recruitments using AI and reduces hiring time to 24 hours. It automates sourcing, screening, outreach, engagement, assessment, interviewing, and scheduling using proprietary deep-learning algorithms. The startup is currently raising $3 million from the lead investor, with participation from existing investors.
OnFinance
Founders: Anuj Srivastava and Priyesh Srivastava
Funding Raised: $1.1 million
Key Investors: Silverneedle Ventures, Indian Angel Network, LetsVenture
Bengaluru-based OnFinance helps banks and wealth management companies with its AI co-pilots that work in areas ranging from equity research to compliance to wealth advisory.
Helium
Founders: Shray Arora and Sidharth Sahni
Funding Raised: $550,000
Key Investor: Merak Ventures
Helium, based in Delhi, helps e-commerce brands with direct-to-consumer web stores with AI and reactive headless storefronts.
Soket Labs
Founder: Abhishek Upperwal
Funding Raised: $140,000
Soket Labs, based in Bengaluru and Gurugram, is an AI research firm that developed open source Pragna-1B multilingual LLM through its in-house GenAI Studio. It plans to raise $7 million in a seed round in two–three months.
Kissan AI
Founder: Pratik Desai
Based in Surat with an extended office in the Bay Area, KissanAI serves agriculture and adjacent domains using its GenAI platform AgriCopilot and a family of domain-specific Agri LLMs, Dhenu. The startup is currently bootstrapped and is backed by the founder’s family and friends, though it plans to raise $3 million to $4 million in a round between seed and Series A.
Shorthills AI
Founders: Pawan Prabhat and Paramdeep Singh
Shorthills AI, based in Gurugram, was founded in June 2018 by Pawan Prabhat and Paramdeep Singh. The pair previously founded the accounting training platform EduPristine. The bootstrapped startup builds custom AI tools for enterprises and has customers in the U.S. and India.