There’s a stat doing the rounds in startup circles right now: early-stage funding for startups in India rose 7% in 2025, even as late-stage deals cooled. That’s not a small thing. It means investors are still placing bets, just smaller ones, on earlier companies, with more scrutiny. The days of handing a 28-year-old a term sheet because their app had good retention in three cities are largely over. What’s replacing it is more interesting: founders who can actually explain their business.
India has over 637,000 registered startups. Most won’t matter. But a handful of companies that came up in the last year or two are worth paying attention to, and here’s why.
Startup Shows Boom
Startup television in India has become a genuine cultural force. Shark Tank India (Sony LIV, now in Season 5) is the most visible example; it’s produced real post-show funding stories and made pitching publicly feel normal rather than desperate. Bharat Ke Super Founders launched on Amazon MX Player in January 2026 with a ₹100 crore investment pool and a panel of actual operators, not just famous names. Startup Singam on Star Vijay has been doing this in Tamil since Season 1, India’s first regional-language startup show, and Season 2 is currently airing. Before all of them, there was The Vault on ET Now (2016-17), which was running this format when most people hadn’t heard of Shark Tank. Mission Start Ab (Amazon Prime Video, 2023) tried a mentorship-first model with government backing. Together, they’ve made one thing very clear: showing up and pitching in public is no longer unusual in India.
10 Startups to Watch
1. Sarvam AI is two years old and already carrying the weight of national expectations. Sarvam was founded in 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, and in April 2025, the government picked it out of 67 applicants to build India’s first sovereign AI under the IndiaAI Mission. That came with access to 4,000 GPUs. Its models run across Hindi and 10 regional languages, are optimised for mobile, and in February 2026, the company launched Sarvam Edge, an on-device AI stack that works entirely without internet. Tamil Nadu has also signed up for what’s being marketed as India’s first Sovereign AI Park. At $53.8 million raised and a government contract in hand, Sarvam is the most serious Indian bet on AI that isn’t just a chatbot wrapper.
2. Go Zero (Shark Tank India)
Ice cream for people who’ve been told to stop eating ice cream. Go Zero is a startup that makes zero-sugar, high-protein, low-calorie versions and has built a surprisingly strong business around it. Founded by Kiran Shah, who spent years at Apsara Ice Creams before going on his own, the company got a deal on Shark Tank India from Aman Gupta and Namita Thapar. It then raised ₹30 crore in a Series A and hit ₹5 crore in monthly revenue in January 2025, which is, by any measure, the worst month of the year to sell ice cream. It’s now on Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto. With 280 million Indians either diabetic or pre-diabetic, calling this a niche feels like a stretch.
3. IDfy
IDfy has been around since 2011, so calling it a new startup is a stretch, but calling it a 2026 story is fair. The Mumbai-based identity verification company just raised ₹476 crore ($53 million) in a Series F led by Neo Asset Management, processes 60 million+ verifications a month, and turned profitable in FY25. The real tailwind here is India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which came into full force in 2025 and sent demand for KYC and compliance infrastructure up sharply. Five hundred enterprise clients across fintech, gaming, and banking. Seven countries. Not glamorous, but increasingly hard to avoid.
4. Regrip (Bharat Ke Super Founders)
Tyres aren’t a sexy business. That might be why nobody’s properly sorted out what to do with them when they wear out. Regrip, founded in 2021 by Tushar Suhalka and his co-founders, is building a system to give end-of-life tyres a second life instead of dumping them. When they pitched on Bharat Ke Super Founders in early 2026, they walked out with ₹20.25 crore, the show’s biggest single deal so far. India generates enormous tyre waste. The infrastructure to deal with it barely exists. That’s the gap, and ESG-focused investors are starting to pay attention to exactly this type of play.
5. SuperTails
The Indian pet economy is growing fast, and most people still don’t realise it. SuperTails, which covers vet consultations, food, grooming, and products in one app, raised a $30 million Series C in February 2026 from Nexus Venture Partners. The category is still relatively uncrowded at the premium end, and the retention data is reportedly strong. People who put their pets on the platform tend to stay. The founders have also been disciplined about staying digital-first before rushing into physical retail, which is more than you can say for most consumer startups.
6. Alt Carbon
Climate tech in India mostly means solar panels and electric vehicles. Alt Carbon is doing something different: enhanced rock weathering, which involves spreading crushed basalt on farmland to trap CO₂ permanently in the soil. It also improves crop yields, which means farmers have a reason to participate beyond altruism. The company raised $12 million in seed funding, sells the resulting carbon removal credits internationally, and is operating across eastern India. The science has held up to third-party scrutiny. The market for verified carbon removal credits is real. And government recognition for climate startups has made fundraising in this space noticeably easier than it was even two years ago.
7. Showroom B2B
Most investment in Indian fashion has chased the consumer end. Showroom B2B went the other direction; it built a marketplace that connects clothing manufacturers directly with retailers, removing the multiple middlemen that slow down and inflate the cost of the fashion supply chain. It raised $17 million in early 2026. The inefficiency it’s targeting is obvious to anyone who’s ever tried to source inventory as a small retailer in India. The fact that it raised serious money going B2B in fashion, when the default move is always D2C, says something about investor confidence in the model.
8. Elixiir Foods
A $9 million seed round on February 12, 2026, makes Elixiir one of the better-funded early-stage grocery bets of the year. The company is trying to build a grocery platform around destination and experience rather than just delivery speed, a direct pushback against the 10-minute delivery model that’s dominated the conversation for the last three years. The founders come from retail and supply chain backgrounds. It’s early days, but the investor interest suggests there’s a real debate happening about whether quick-commerce is the end of the story or just one chapter of it.
9. Snitch (Shark Tank India)
Snitch is on this startup list because of what happened after Shark Tank, not because of it. The Bengaluru men’s fashion brand raised ₹340 crore in a Series B, crossed ₹520 crore in FY25 revenue, and hit a valuation above ₹2,500 crore. The fast-fashion category for men was largely ignored before Snitch proved it had real scale. In 2026, the next chapter is international. Worth following.
10. Olyv (formerly SmartCoin)
Rebranded from SmartCoin to Olyv before a ₹207 crore Series C in early 2026, the fintech lends to overlooked borrowers. It focuses on salaried and self-employed users who don’t fit traditional bank criteria.
It’s a large, underserved market, and it’s one that’s become steadily more comfortable borrowing through apps. The rebrand signals a push toward a fuller financial services product beyond credit. Alternative lending has faced regulatory pressure in India, but Olyv has stayed compliant, and its Series C shows investor confidence.
Across all ten startups, the pattern is the same. None of them are raising money on a dream and a deck. They have revenue, they have customers who come back, and they’re operating in markets with real demand. That’s what 2026 looks like.
