Toxin-free, ceramic coated cookware brand - cookware sets, frying pans, tawas. Designed in partnership with celebrity chef and investor in the brand, Saransh Goila. Like Cumin Co., this is a premium brand with a set of 3 priced between ₹8.5-12K. Products are "designed in California", manufactured in Italy. Aiming at ₹30CR annualized revenue in 12 months. $3.2M seed round. Founders: Siddharth (RV College '12) was the founder of Upbeatz (marketplace for global brands) and of Palette Brands (house of brands which included cookware); Himanshi (Delhi Univ. '08) was Head of Digital Marketing at Reebok and Director of Brand Marketing at Cleartrip, before co-founding Palette Brands. Ember appears to be founded in Sep 2022 as part of Palette Brands and launched under its own name in 2024. Comps: Cumin Co. (Fireside, Huddle - funded two weeks ago), along with premium incumbents (Meyer, Stahl, Tefal).

"India's first prebiotic soda brand", i.e. sodas with zero added sugar, low calories and gut-health benefits. In two flavours - grape and mango chilli. No information on sales. Seed round of an undisclosed amount. Other investors in the round: Subba Rao Telidevara, Bijoy Daga (Turiya Advisory Services), Robert Pancras. Founded by brothers Aditya and Yash. Aditya worked as a user experience designer at Samsung Electronics and at Frog (part of Capgemini). Founded in May 2024. Comps: Atmosphere Kombucha, Raw Pressery, Beyond Water.

B2B procurement platform for packaging materials, warehouse assets, capex and turnkey projects. Serves clients across e-commerce, quick commerce, hospitality and fresh produce - including Blinkit, Flipkart, Meesho, First Cry, Mensa Brands. Packaging materials are manufactured inhouse. ₹4CR seed round. Founders: Sagar (IIM Lucknow '23) was with EATCLUB, Lal10 (apparel manufacturer) and Swiggy; Rishabh was with Bira91 and Kenstar. Founded in Dec 2023.

Unified platform for access monitoring and AI observability. AI systems are now accessing sensitive enterprise data in ways legacy database monitoring tools can't see or control - the platform gives this visibility, tying each query and data flow to a real identity. The company has a few dozen clients across FinTech, banking and SaaS, including Razorpay, PayTM, Slice and Meesho. Now focused on US enterprise expansion. $2.2M seed round. Angels: former Meta executives (Chris Bream, Rahul Sood, Karandeep Anand, Mala Ramakrishnan), Postman founders (Ankit Sobti, Abhinav Asthana). Founders: Apurv (Univ. of Illinois '18) was Data Science Lead for business messaging at Meta; Krishna (IIT Kharagpur '17) was with Meta (product security) and Jupiter (Head of Security and Compliance); Akash (IIT-K '17) was Director of Engineering at Sprinklr. Founded in Mar 2023. Offices in Sunnywale and Bengaluru.

Sexual health platform for men, through weekly consultations with experts, medication and chat support. The company will now establish co-branded clinics and introduce products under its RxMen label. It also advises men on other issues - hormonal balance, skin concerns, stress and sleep disorders. Annualised revenue at $800K with 6,000 consultations per month, aiming at $1.7M by FY26 end. ₹5CR seed round. Other investors in the round include Ankit Goel, along with a grant from Prosus Group. Founder Shailja is a software engineer who founded Koala Kabs, a ride hailing app with women-only drivers. Founded in Dec 2022.

Health-tech startup developing AI-powered diagnostic solutions for respiratory and hepato-pancreatico-biliary (HPB) diseases. Its main product bridges the gap caused by India's acute shortage of radiologists in tier 2 and smaller cities, where diagnosis is delayed by up to 10 days with error rates of up to 40%. “We're not just building AI diagnostic tools – we're saving lives by ensuring that a patient in a tier-3 city gets the same quality chest X-ray/CT/MRI/PET-CT Scan interpretation as someone in a metro hospital. Our 40.1% improvement in missed case detection, validated in Nature Scientific, proves that AI can be the great equalizer in healthcare access.” ₹4CR round from BioAngels (a part of IAN). IAN angels in this round: Nitin Zamre, Samir Kalia, Mitesh Shah. Founders: Ankit is a Professor in the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow; Saumya has a PhD in Public Health and was part of the Google Brain team for three years. Founded in 2020.

Platform offering digital twins for remote asset management and predictive maintenance. Little information available on the company's customers or current scale. Founded in 2016, originally as a provider of technical education using VR and AR. The current CEO, Vishnuvardhan, was the Director of Trend Instrumentation and Automation and is an instrumentation engineer by background; the former CEO and current director Karthik was briefly a product designer at Ather. ₹4CR round.

Provider of residential solar systems for residential complexes, with pilots in 13 housing societies in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi so far. The company combines AI-led energy profiling to reduce the planning stage for such projects from weeks to hours, and integrates IoT smart monitoring to track real time performance. $500K seed round. Angels in the round: Raghunandan G (Zolve), Amit Lakhotia (Park+), Ankit Gupta (Brookfield), Hari Krishnan Nair (Great Learning). Founders: Akshat has been the founder of Nessa Illumination Technologies (LED lighting solutions) for 15 years; Ankush is from Enerture Technologies and Lanco Solar Energy (both are solar EPCs). Comps: SolarSquare (Lightspeed, rooftop solar for residential complexes, homes and commercial). Companies like Fourth Partner Energy (last raise: $275M) started with residential and small commercial projects a decade ago, before graduating to large scale projects for industry.

Womens wear brand for pregnant women and new moms. Redesigning maternity wear keeping the mother in mind as much as the baby. It has an online community of 250K mothers across India. ₹7CR seed round. Founders: Hina was a manager for supply analytics at Reckitt for four years; Mayank is from Myntra, Trell and Tolexo. Founded in Nov 2021. Comps: Mamaearth, HunyHuny.

Pain care brand with a range of products (e.g. healing creams and oils) for joint pain, migraines, back pain and arthritis. Pain relief is a ₹16K CR (~$1.8B) market in India. The company has future plans to launch new products (muscle recovery), expand its AI-driven physiotherapy app and deliver at-home pain management sessions. ₹2.8CR seed round. Angels in the round: Pawan Gupta (Fashinza), Amit Baid (10X Growth Ventures), Nidhish Mundra (Oaktree). Founders: Anshul was an engineer at Coupa Software and TradeFin; Manu was an EIR at Times Internet and Smile Group. Founded in Dec 2022. Comps: FlexifyMe (Pre-A this week: IvyCap, Signal Ventures, GSF) offers online physiotherapy sessions (AI + in-person) as well as in centres.