Several companies have picked up early-stage cheques this year. In August, AI-powered entertainment company Dashverse raised $13 million from Peak XV, with participation from Stellaris and Z47. Audio and video content platform Kuku FM raised $85 million from Granite Asia in October. Former Housing.com chief executive Jason Kothari’s startup Mythik also received $15 million in May from Sakal Media Group, VC Grid, Viscera Capital as well as Shah Rukh Khan’s family office. And that’s just content-generation as a space.
Indians spend an average of nearly seven hours a day accessing various services and products on the internet, according to social media intelligence firm Meltwater. Time spent has gone up by five minutes from 2024. Mobile devices account for 58% of time spent online. “With time spent on the phone going up, and more people coming online, consumer AI companies will have even bigger markets to go after,” said Anant Vidur Puri, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
On the edtech side, English language learning startup SpeakX raised $16 million, led by WestBridge Capital, personalised learning company Arivihan raised $4.17 million from Prosus Ventures and Accel. Stimuler, a voice-first tutor for English as a second language, secured $3.75 million in pre-Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, SWC Global, and others. Seekho raised $28 million from Bessemer Venture Partners as well.
Funds like Stellaris and Bessemer are both actively scouting for AI-led consumer tech companies. “There are opportunities across the board, from edtech to financial services, healthcare travel, and even content,” said Rahul Chowdhri, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. “Wherever there have been traditionally purely digital experiences, AI can play an interesting role there.”
According to a report by San Francisco-based venture fund Menlo Ventures, there are 1.8 billion people globally who use consumer AI at least weekly or monthly, of which 600 million use it daily. In the same vein, $12.1 billion was spent on consumer AI tools, though most of this goes towards general AI assistants. Crucially, only about 3% of the 1.8 billion users actually pay for AI services, with an overwhelming majority relying on free tools. There is a “massive opportunity for specialized tools to unlock more value,” the firm said in its note.
Some of the consumer AI companies that raised money this year in the US include note-taking assistant Fireflies.ai, which reached unicorn status (valuation of $1 billion or more) following a tender offer and a partnership with Perplexity. Generative AI creatives company Krea raised $47 million in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Ventures. Similarly, AI styling company Alta raised $11 million in its seed round from Menlo Ventures, matchmaking startup Sitch raised $5 million from M13 and a16z speedrun alongside a host of angel investors.
Where the white spaces are
Broadly, most investment firms are looking for companies that can consolidate within the Indian market first before becoming global players. Opportunities in the country aren’t just in education or content generation, but health and beauty, e-commerce, travel, productivity and even spirituality.
Content generation in particular, thanks to larger companies, has already taken off. The AI-generated Mahabharata series from Collective Media Network and JioStar shows that taking such content to the masses is feasible, but being well-received is a different matter altogether.
“By putting an AI generated series in the mainstream, its essentially rationalizing the fact that AI content can exist,” said Anant Vidur Puri, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. “In fact, AI content can no longer just ‘exist’ but is here to stay and change how we produce as well as consume content.”
The firm’s portfolio company, Seekho, is contributing with its own AI-generated Ramayana content.
Experts say that traditional typing, especially in a country like India, will become a thing of the past, as upwardly mobile urban consumers engaging with local-language content increasingly prefer voice-first communication. “Just like mobile-first for India rather than desktop-first, there is room for vernacular and voice-first AI co-pilots which don’t start with a chat window that requires you to type,” said Hari Balaji, partner, technology consulting at EY India.
Betting on the 2026 wave
The number of consumer AI companies that exist in India is still very low. Data from startup intelligence platform Tracxn shows that there were only 14 companies that were founded this year in the AI consumer tech space, according to Tracxn. None of them have raised any money.
“We’re quite bullish on the overall use of consumer AI,” said Chowdhri.“I will also confess that we’re in very early days. Most founders end up building for enterprises since there is a clear business push to adopt AI.” So far, the number of consumer AI startups Stellaris Venture Partners has evaluated has been low, just 50-75 through the entire year.
That isn’t to say such companies don’t exist or haven’t been gradually built over time. A report by early-stage investment firm Antler India maps 72 companies across various sectors, though the list is not exhaustive. Some of the notable names include Wysa, Disha, Healthify, Astrosure, Rocket, Figr, Autodraft, Glance, Alle, and Puch AI.
There’s going to be a wave of companies in the content space raising money. “Several companies in the content generation space, despite being small, are currently in the process of fundraising. Expect a lot more deals to be announced from funds in the next four months,” said an industry analyst who declined to be named.
But even as these companies scale, questions remain about what makes them unique, especially in terms of applications. What’s to stop a larger player from coming in and consolidating the market with their offerings?
“Even though $1.5 billion has gone into AI-native startups with a large chunk of it going towards the application layer, there’s no visibility that these companies have the differentiation for me as an investor to confidently say that an India-specific company will win,” said Sandeep Murthy, partner at consumer-focused venture capital firm Lightbox Ventures.
