The CEO VINE

Author: Team CEO VINE

  • Neha Dhupia Backed D2C Dinnerware Brand BlackCarrot Raises ₹1.4 Crore in Total Funding

    Neha Dhupia Backed D2C Dinnerware Brand BlackCarrot Raises ₹1.4 Crore in Total Funding

    BlackCarrot, the homegrown dinnerware brand backed by actor Neha Dhupia, has crossed ₹1.4 crore in total funding. The most recent investment of ₹30 lakh was secured on Zee TV and Zee5’s startup reality show Ideabaaz, where the deal was led by Titan Shaili Chopra at a valuation of ₹15.3 crore.

    The show features business leaders including Arjun Vaidya, Jimmy Mistry, Sandesh Sharda, Anupam Bansal, Shaili Chopra, Archana Jahangir, Priyanka Salot, Rishabh Mariwala, Pawan Jaggi and Simran Mohapatra. BlackCarrot received multiple offers before closing its deal with Shaili Chopra.

    Over the past 12 months, BlackCarrot has also raised capital from Venture Catalysts, We Founder Circle, EvolveX Accelerator, GX Ventures and Suraj Nalin of PlaySimple Games. Celebrity investors Neha Dhupia and Agnello Dias have joined the brand’s cap table as well.

    Founded by Yadupati Gupta and Vishal Gupta, BlackCarrot focuses on creating dinnerware centered on health safety, everyday functionality and modern design. The brand uses bone-china-free ceramic, lead-free glassware and 304 food-grade stainless steel across its range.

    “We are excited and grateful for the opportunity to present BlackCarrot on Ideabaaz and to partner with Shaili Chopra. This funding will help us grow across D2C, marketplaces, quick commerce and offline retail. We are also preparing for a larger round to support our scale-up plan,” said Yadupati Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of BlackCarrot.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/sophrosyne-technologies-raises-2-million-in-seed-funding-led-by-bluehill-vc/

    Neha Dhupia said, “BlackCarrot stands for conscious living through thoughtful design and safe materials. I am proud to be associated with a brand that is elevating how Indian families dine together.”

    BlackCarrot products are available on Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Tata Cliq Luxury, Myntra, Amazon, Flipkart and Nykaa Fashion. The brand has also entered modern retail through Nature’s Basket and Food Square.

  • Wealthy.in Raises ₹130 Crore in Series B Funding Led by Bertelsmann India Investments

    Wealthy.in Raises ₹130 Crore in Series B Funding Led by Bertelsmann India Investments

    Wealthy.in has raised ₹130 crore in its Series B round led by Bertelsmann India Investments. The round also saw participation from existing investor Alphawave Global, new investor Shepherd’s Hill, and a group of tech entrepreneurs.

    This marks the company’s first major fundraise since its Series A round in 2022. Over the last three years, Wealthy’s assets under management have grown from ₹200 crore to ₹5,000 crore.

    The company plans to use the fresh capital to strengthen its AI-powered tools and digital infrastructure for mutual fund distributors (MFDs) and wealth management professionals. The goal is to support India’s expanding investor base and enable advisors to deliver a more personalized and efficient investing experience.

    Founded by Aditya Agarwal and Prashant Gupta, Wealthy provides a mobile-first platform designed for investment professionals. It enables data-driven recommendations, investment reporting, and client lifecycle management.

    Wealthy currently processes more than ₹300 crore in monthly transactions and works with over 6,000 mutual fund distributors. The network serves more than 100,000 clients across 1,000 towns. The company also adds more than 350 distributors each month, making it one of the leading recruiters in the category. Its 20 offices across India are supported by a team of over 250 members.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/pibit-ai-raises-7-million-in-series-a-funding-led-by-stellaris-venture-partners/

    “India has an advice gap that cannot be addressed by technology alone,” said Aditya Agarwal, Co-founder of Wealthy. He said mutual funds continue to lag in investor penetration when compared to sectors like insurance. According to him, advisors need tools that help them scale while retaining the trust and personal engagement they bring to investors.

    Data from the Reserve Bank of India shows equity mutual funds saw net inflows of ₹4.66 lakh crore in FY25, growing more than seven times in five years. As more households move toward managed investment products, platforms like Wealthy aim to support this shift through technology, distribution, and advisory enablement.

  • Sophrosyne Technologies Raises $2 Million in Seed Funding Led by Bluehill.VC

    Sophrosyne Technologies Raises $2 Million in Seed Funding Led by Bluehill.VC

    Semiconductor startup Sophrosyne Technologies has raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by Bluehill.VC.

    The company also recently cleared technical diligence and received a MeitY DLI grant of $1.2 million.

    The funds will support the transition from prototype silicon to full-scale product development and global OEM engagement. The company will also expand its silicon design and firmware teams and begin early customer deployments in India and international markets.

    Co-founded in 2022 by Manish Srivastava and Jatin Gupta, Sophrosyne Technologies is a fabless semiconductor startup based in Bengaluru. The company builds ultra-low power System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for wearable and digital health devices.

    Its architecture integrates biosensing, power management, software support, and AI algorithms into a single chip designed to help device makers offer continuous health monitoring.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/thimblerr-raises-1-4-million-in-bridge-round-led-by-inflection-point-ventures/

    The SoC supports multiple physiological signals including ECG, PPG, breathing, and temperature. The platform’s edge and cloud AI models convert raw data into real-time health assessments for timely intervention.

  • Pibit.AI Raises $7 Million in Series A Funding Led by Stellaris Venture Partners

    Pibit.AI Raises $7 Million in Series A Funding Led by Stellaris Venture Partners

    Pibit.AI has raised $7 million in its Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners, with participation from Y Combinator and Arali Ventures.

    The company will use the funding to build its Centralized Underwriting Risk Environment (CURE) and increase adoption across insurance carriers. It will also expand its product and engineering teams over the next year.

    Founded in 2020 by Akash Agarwal and Karan Bedi, Pibit.AI works on simplifying commercial insurance underwriting. The company operates from San Francisco and Bengaluru and is backed by Y Combinator and Tides Business Incubator at IIT Roorkee.

    Pibit.AI focuses on helping insurers convert unstructured submission documents into structured data that can be used for risk evaluation. Its platform processes loss runs, ACORD forms, PDFs, and images to support faster decisions for underwriters.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/ctrlb-raises-2-5-million-in-seed-funding-led-by-chiratae-ventures/

    The company’s core product is the CURE platform, which brings the entire underwriting workflow into one environment. DocumentCURE structures and cleans documents. CleanCURE organizes messy files and ensures system compatibility. WorkflowCURE automates the submission-to-quote process. RiskCURE provides clear risk scores and signals to guide underwriters.

    Pibit.AI aims to support underwriting teams, reduce operational load, and help insurers issue policies with greater efficiency.

  • Thimblerr Raises $1.4 Million in Bridge Round Led by Inflection Point Ventures

    Thimblerr Raises $1.4 Million in Bridge Round Led by Inflection Point Ventures

    Bengaluru-based fashion supply-chain platform Thimblerr has raised $1.4 million in a bridge round led by Inflection Point Ventures, with participation from 3one4 Capital, Mount Judi Ventures, Venture Catalysts and We Founder Circle.

    The company will use the capital for customer acquisition, entering new categories, and strengthening its supply-chain network.

    Thimblerr was founded in 2022 by IIT alumni Piyush Jalan and Rishav Papneja to help fashion brands move from concept to production with shorter timelines. The platform supports design, manufacturing and production planning, and works with more than a dozen brands including Tata Trent, USPA, Snitch and The Souled Store.

    The company says it reduces the traditional 180-day cycle to 30–60 days and enables the creation of over 3,000 designs a month. It is building a network of cloud factories powered by an ecosystem of more than 800 machines and data-driven production systems.

    Jalan said the company aims to bring speed, transparency and reliability to India’s fast fashion supply chain, and plans to connect more global brands with manufacturers in India’s $5 billion fast fashion market.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/kaaj-raises-3-8-million-in-seed-funding-led-by-kindred-ventures/

    IPV has invested over Rs 800 crore across 250 startups and recently launched Physis Capital, a $50 million CAT II VC fund focused on growth-stage startups.

    Thimblerr’s platform offers AI-enabled design tools, rapid prototyping, real-time production tracking, and access to a large materials library. The company positions itself as an infrastructure layer for India’s fast-fashion manufacturing ecosystem and continues to expand its client base across women’s, men’s, active and streetwear categories.

  • CtrlB Raises $2.5 Million in Seed Funding Led by Chiratae Ventures

    CtrlB Raises $2.5 Million in Seed Funding Led by Chiratae Ventures

    CtrlB, a unified data platform for observability and security, has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Chiratae Ventures. Equirus, InnovateX Fund, Campus Fund, and Point One Capital also participated.

    The company will use the capital to scale its diskless data lake platform, speed up R&D efforts, and file patents for its indexing and compression technology. CtrlB will also work toward SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications as it prepares for broader enterprise adoption.

    As part of its expansion plans, CtrlB will increase its team size to 50–60 members across distributed systems, DevOps, solution architecture, and sales. The company will strengthen partnerships in the cloud and DevOps ecosystem and grow its operations across India and the United States.

    Founded in 2023 by Adarsh Srivastava (CEO), CtrlB provides a unified data engine designed to manage large volumes of telemetry data including logs, metrics, events, and traces.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/circle-raises-%e2%82%b93-4-crore-in-a-pre-seed-round-led-by-titan-capital/

    Earlier known as Dev0, the platform replaces cost-heavy observability and SIEM systems by offering a high-speed, cost-efficient data lake built on a proprietary probabilistic indexing and compression algorithm.

    CtrlB supports enterprises by reducing storage costs and enabling quick analysis of large data sets. Its clients include Limechat and GoComet, who use the platform to improve debugging efficiency and manage data growth.

  • Kaaj Raises $3.8 Million in Seed Funding led by Kindred Ventures

    Kaaj Raises $3.8 Million in Seed Funding led by Kindred Ventures

    Kaaj, an AI-fintech startup focused on credit intelligence for small and medium-sized borrowers, has raised $3.8 million in a seed funding round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from Better Tomorrow Ventures and other investors.

    The company will use the funding to expand its product suite, enhance its AI modules, and grow its customer base of lenders and brokers serving the SMB financing sector.

    Founded in 2024 by Utsav Shah and Shivi Sharma, Kaaj is based in San Francisco and builds AI workflows that automate credit risk analysis. Its platform verifies borrower documents, organizes financial information, conducts fraud checks, and integrates with loan origination systems and CRM tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/circle-raises-%e2%82%b93-4-crore-in-a-pre-seed-round-led-by-titan-capital/

    Kaaj aims to shorten underwriting timelines from weeks to minutes, helping lenders process smaller loans more efficiently and extend capital access to more small businesses.

    Since launch, the platform has processed over $5 billion in loan applications and is already used by lenders including Amur Equipment Finance and Fundr.

  • Jeff Bezos Takes Co-CEO Role at New AI Startup Project Prometheus

    Jeff Bezos Takes Co-CEO Role at New AI Startup Project Prometheus

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is taking on an operational leadership role for the first time since 2021 as he steps in as co-CEO of Project Prometheus, an AI startup that has raised $6.2 billion in funding. According to EconomicTimes, the company is backed partly by Bezos and has already hired close to 100 employees, including talent from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta.

    Project Prometheus will focus on applying AI to engineering and manufacturing across sectors such as computers, aerospace and automobiles. The approach is centered around building systems that learn from physical experimentation rather than relying solely on digital text, expanding on AI work happening in robotics, chemistry and scientific discovery.

    Bezos will lead the company alongside Vik Bajaj, a physicist and former Google X researcher who previously co-founded Verily and later led Foresite Labs. Bajaj has stepped away from his recent role to focus on the new venture.

    This marks Bezos’s return to an active executive position after stepping down as Amazon CEO in July 2021. Since then, he has spent more time on Blue Origin and other projects while continuing to invest in emerging AI companies, including Physical Intelligence.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/pype-ai-raises-1-2-million-in-pre-seed-round-led-by-kalaari-capital/

    Project Prometheus joins a growing group of firms working on AI systems designed for real-world problem-solving. Companies such as Periodic Labs and major tech players like Google, Meta and OpenAI are also building models aimed at accelerating work in the physical sciences.

    The startup has not yet disclosed its launch timeline or headquarters. However, sources reports that it plans to explore large-scale scientific experimentation through AI, placing Bezos directly in the ongoing race to build the next generation of AI technologies.

  • Circle Raises ₹3.4 Crore in a Pre-Seed Round Led by Titan Capital

    Circle Raises ₹3.4 Crore in a Pre-Seed Round Led by Titan Capital

    Circle, a Bengaluru-based platform for buying and selling pre-owned products, has raised ₹3.4 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Titan Capital. Raveen Sastry, Co-founder of Myntra, also participated.

    The company will deploy the capital to strengthen its AI verification stack, including guided pricing, automated condition grading, and catalog matching. Circle is currently focused on electronics and household categories and plans to expand to more cities by 2026.

    Founded in 2025 by Ankit Misra and Chirag Kataruka, Circle aims to simplify C2C transactions, a space often marked by fake listings, incomplete product details, and lack of buyer-seller protection. The platform verifies listings through AI, manages doorstep pickup and delivery, and ensures secure payment flows.

    Sellers on Circle can list items in minutes, receive pricing support, and get payouts once the product is picked up and verified. Buyers receive verified products with doorstep delivery and payment protection.

    Circle has onboarded more than 17,000 users since its soft launch in Bengaluru in August 2025. Electronics, furniture, appliances, and home goods are currently the most active categories.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/abcd-by-ritz7-hosts-no-code-and-ai-workshops-for-1700-students-across-2-engineering-campuses/

    India’s pre-owned goods market is valued at ₹1.6 lakh crore, with more than 70 million people transacting used products every month. Despite this scale, the user experience remains inconsistent across platforms. Circle aims to streamline this through a full-stack operational model.

    Commenting on the company’s vision, Co-founder Chirag Kataruka said Circle wants to make pre-owned transactions as smooth and safe as buying new products. A Titan Capital spokesperson said growing product replacement cycles in Indian households make this an important consumer opportunity.

  • Pype AI Raises $1.2 Million in Pre-Seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital

    Pype AI Raises $1.2 Million in Pre-Seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital

    Pype AI, a healthtech startup building voice-based AI agents for hospitals and clinics, has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital. Wyser Capital and Tenity also participated in the round.

    The company will use the funds to strengthen its healthcare communication platform and expand into the United States market.

    Founded in 2024 by Dhruv Mehra and Ashish Tripathy, Pype AI develops AI front desk systems that automate routine patient interactions. The agents manage tasks such as appointment scheduling, follow-ups, treatment preparation, and round-the-clock support.

    Trained on medical conversational datasets, these systems are designed to handle patient communication reliably and help hospitals reduce missed appointments and operational overhead.

    Along with its voice agents, the company has built Whispey, an open-source observability platform with more than 40 evaluations that track performance, compliance, and safety. Through integrations with hospital electronic medical records, Pype AI helps facilities streamline patient coordination and improve adherence without relying on manual processes or outdated call systems.

    https://app.ceotrail.com/alive-raises-6-crore-in-funding/

    Pype AI is currently live across several healthcare facilities in India and manages more than 85 percent of incoming patient queries without human intervention. The company is integrating with platforms such as Zocdoc, Epic and Cerner as it begins onboarding US-based clinic networks.

    Over the next year, Pype AI plans to expand its footprint to more than 50 hospitals and clinic chains by mid-2026. The team is also working with medical experts to publish research on the impact of AI-driven communication on patient outcomes.