Page 7 - Start Ups

India's defence startups attract government contracts, investor funding

A clutch of domestic private firms are challenging state-run suppliers with advanced tech-driven hardware for India's defence services, signalling growing confidence in homegrown military technology

Job-tech platform Masai aims to triple revenue, plans overseas expansion

The company offers both pre-paid and pay-after-placement models, and has partnered with leading Indian institutions like IITs and IIMs for its upskilling programmes

IFC invests $60 million in Everstone Capital's new Fund V initiative

IFC's $60-million investment in Everstone Capital's Fund V will target high-growth sectors such as healthcare, technology, consumer goods, and financial services across India and Southeast Asia

BirlaNu acquires Clean Coats for ₹120 crore to strengthen portfolio

Move part of strengthening portfolio amid Rs 1300 crore growth outlay

Arya.ag NBFC arm plans to exceed ₹3K crore in commodity financing in FY26

Arya.ag does commodity financing through its NBFC arm, Aryadhan Financial Solutions Pvt Ltd

SMBC to invest $200 million in Indian startups amid booming IPO market

A fund co-run by the banking arm of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. plans to pour the bulk of the $200 million it has raised into Indian startups

Giga raises $61 million to scale AI-driven customer support platform

Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures will help expand the technical team and accelerate enterprise deployments of Giga's AI customer support agents

MeshDefend raises $2.3 million to bring AI intelligence to enterprise data

Kalaari Capital leads the pre-seed round as the startup, founded by former Dell executives, builds an AI-native platform to secure and automate enterprise data infrastructure

Urban Company reports 37% revenue growth as core business stays profitable

Adjusted Ebitda loss of ₹35 crore driven by investments in new vertical Insta Help; international markets achieve breakeven

Snabbit raises $30 mn Series C to expand into child, elder and cooking care

The Bertelsmann-led funding marks Snabbit's third raise in nine months, helping the women-led quick services startup expand into new home care categories

IntrCity SmartBus secures ₹250 crore as India's intercity travel booms

Asset-light aggregator plans to double fleet and reach Rs 1,000 crore revenue as sector grows 10-13% annually

E-commerce giants adopt fiscal discipline to trim losses, stave off rivals

Firms are tightening spending, optimising supply chains, and expanding into smaller cities, positioning themselves for public listings as post-pandemic demand growth slows

Mem0 raises $24 million Series A to build memory layer for AI agents

Mem0 aims to become the default memory layer for AI agents and large language models with fresh funding led by Basis Set Ventures

Momentum Capital invests in climate, health startups with Rs 60 crore fund

India is among the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, but attracts less than 4 per cent of global climate-tech VC funding, with most of it concentrated in mobility

Blume Ventures secures $175 million in first close for its fifth fund

Early-stage VC firm Blume Ventures has announced an initial close of $175 million for its fifth fund, targeting $250-275 million by early 2026, with continued LP support

Smallest.ai raises $8 mn seed round led by Sierra Ventures for expansion

The full-stack enterprise voice AI platform plans to scale operations in North America and India and expand into regulated sectors such as banking, healthcare, and retail

Unicorn India Ventures to close ₹1,200 cr Fund III by December 2025

The VC firm has raised over ₹1,000 crore and plans to invest 80% of Fund III in deep-tech, defence, and semiconductor startups across 20 companies

Indian-origin startup offers jobs to laid-off Meta staff, pay up to ₹5.2 cr

Meta to cut 600 positions from its AI labs; Smallest AI, led by Indian-origin founder Sudarshan Kamath, has offered to hire these affected employees with top salaries of $600,000

AI firm Uniphore secures $260 mn from Nvidia, AMD, Snowflake and Databricks

Uniphore values at $2.5 billion as it boosts its Business AI Cloud platform and ecosystem for enterprise-scale adoption

Kerala's climate tech startup gets ₹75 lakh grant from Cochin Shipyard

The cheque for the amount was handed over at a function at IIM-Kozhikode, where the official agreement was signed with the startup founded by CEO Akhil Raj Pottekkat