Lumikai Leads $600,000 Pre-Seed in Demoverse, a Bengaluru AI Platform That Lets Shoppers Co-Design Products Before They Are Made

Demoverse, a Bengaluru-based startup building an AI-powered platform for product co-creation, has raised $600,000 in a pre-seed round led by Lumikai, the venture capital firm focused on gaming and interactive media.

Lumikai invested $500,000 through its Pixels programme, according to an announcement on 22 September 2026. UAE-based investor-operator Marlan and a group of angel investors also participated in the round.

The company plans to use the funds to build out its design community, strengthen its consumer application and support expansion into the United States.

Turning shoppers into designers

Founded earlier this year by Akshay Mehta, Demoverse is built on a simple premise: consumers should be involved in designing products before they are manufactured, not merely asked for feedback afterwards.

On the platform, brands post product concepts and design directions. Consumers then use AI tools to reshape and refine those concepts according to their own preferences. The wider community evaluates and votes on the resulting designs, generating signals about which products are likely to succeed before brands commit to manufacturing.

Crucially, contributors whose ideas influence winning products can earn royalties when those products are commercialised. That mechanism turns participation into a potential source of income and gives users a stake in the success of the products they help shape.

The company currently operates on a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model. It has run around seven closed trials with brands, including beauty e-commerce platform Purplle, and plans to convert these partnerships into paid campaigns.

Why a gaming investor backed a commerce startup

Lumikai's decision to lead the round may seem unusual at first glance, given that Demoverse operates in consumer commerce rather than gaming. But the overlap is significant. Demoverse's model draws heavily on mechanics familiar from games and interactive media: creative tools, community participation, voting, rewards and a sense of ownership.

The company's approach is closely related to trends Lumikai has tracked in interactive entertainment, where players increasingly create content, customise experiences and participate in virtual economies. Applying those dynamics to physical products is a natural extension of the idea that audiences want to participate, not just consume.

Marlan's participation adds a deep-tech and Middle Eastern dimension to the cap table, which may be useful as the company thinks about international expansion.

Solving the demand-prediction problem

For consumer brands, one of the most persistent challenges is predicting which products will sell. Fashion brands in particular produce collections months in advance, often based on trend forecasts, historical data and intuition. Products that fail to sell lead to markdowns, excess inventory and waste, a problem that carries both financial and environmental costs.

Demoverse aims to address that problem by generating demand signals before production begins. If a design attracts strong community interest and votes, the brand gains evidence that the product has an audience. If it does not, the brand can revise or abandon the concept without having invested in manufacturing.

This approach echoes earlier models such as crowdfunding platforms and pre-order campaigns, which allowed creators to validate demand before production. What Demoverse adds is the use of generative AI to lower the barrier for consumers to contribute design ideas, and a structured community process for evaluating them.

Starting with fashion

The company is initially focusing on fashion before expanding into beauty, consumer packaged goods and other categories. Fashion is a logical starting point: it is highly visual, driven by taste and trends, and plagued by overproduction. Consumers also tend to be emotionally invested in fashion, making them more likely to engage in design and voting.

Beauty is a natural next step, particularly given the company's early trial with Purplle. Product formats, packaging and shade ranges are areas where consumer input could inform brand decisions.

Challenges ahead

Demoverse faces several challenges common to community-driven platforms. It must attract and retain an active base of contributors who produce high-quality ideas. It must persuade brands that the insights generated on the platform are reliable indicators of real purchasing behaviour, not just enthusiasm from a self-selected group of users. And it must design a royalty system that is transparent, fair and financially sustainable.

Intellectual property is another area requiring careful design. When consumers use AI tools to modify brand concepts, questions arise about who owns the resulting designs and how contributions are credited. Clear terms and processes will be essential to building trust with both brands and contributors.

The planned expansion into the United States adds complexity but also opportunity. The US market has a large base of consumers engaged with creator culture and brands experimenting with community-led product development.

The role of AI in lowering the creative barrier

A central element of Demoverse's proposition is the use of generative AI to let non-designers participate in product creation. Traditionally, contributing a design idea required skills in sketching, digital illustration or pattern-making. Generative tools allow consumers to describe changes in words, adjust colours and shapes, or combine elements from different concepts, producing visual results that can be shared and evaluated by the community.

That shift could dramatically widen the pool of contributors. Instead of a small number of trained designers, a brand could gather ideas from thousands of engaged customers, each bringing their own tastes and cultural perspectives. For brands targeting diverse markets, including India's regional consumers and international audiences, such input could reveal preferences that internal design teams might overlook.

The challenge is to ensure that the process produces designs that are manufacturable, cost-effective and consistent with a brand's identity. Demoverse will need to provide brands with controls to set parameters for what contributors can change, so that the creative freedom it offers remains commercially useful.

A new model for consumer brands

Demoverse is part of a broader shift in how consumer brands think about their audiences. Social media has already given consumers a louder voice in shaping brand reputation. The next step, which Demoverse is pursuing, is to give them a direct role in product creation and a share in the rewards.

With fresh capital, early brand trials and an investor that understands interactive communities, Demoverse is positioned to test whether co-creation can move from a marketing gimmick to a core part of how products are designed and brought to market. If it works, the startup could help brands make fewer products that nobody wants, and more of the ones that customers have already told them they will buy.