More than one lakh of India's 2.12 lakh government-recognised startups now have at least one woman director or partner, according to data shared in the Lok Sabha, reflecting a structural shift in founder demographics.
Mumbai investment firm Piper Serica has raised Rs 300 crore toward its Rs 800 crore Bharat Tech Fund within 45 days of launch, targeting deeptech startups in semiconductors, defence and spacetech.
Mumbai's Benne, a two-year-old Bengaluru-style dosa chain founded by a former actor and a psychologist, has raised Rs 35 crore led by Ranjan Pai's Claypond Capital, valuing the brand at Rs 364 crore.
Direct-to-consumer ethnic and fashion startup Knya has crossed the ₹100 crore revenue mark in FY26, with profit after tax rising threefold year-on-year, underscoring a broader maturation among India's D2C fashion brands from growth-at-all-costs toward disciplined profitability.
Google Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, the Indian-American co-architect of MapReduce and Bigtable, is stepping away from Google to co-found a new artificial intelligence venture alongside Jeff Dean, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals — the latest sign that the deepest technical talent in Silicon Valley is betting on independent AI labs over incumbent giants.
Swiggy has outlined a strategy centred on exclusive products, private labels and brand partnerships to differentiate its quick-commerce arm Instamart, even as it reiterated a path to overall cash break-even within the next two quarters.
Reliance Retail Ventures has acquired the AI Styling Engine and commerce app of Furrl, a Bengaluru-based fashion discovery platform founded by Esha Tiwary, folding the four-year-old startup's personalisation technology into its broader AI push.
Government data shows 1,02,054 of India's 2,12,283 recognised startups have at least one woman director or partner, with ₹2,995 crore in AIF funding for women-led ventures.
Healthtech startup Temple, founded by Deepinder Goyal, has doubled its valuation to $375 million and launched its first employee stock ownership liquidity programme.
Google has selected 20 AI-powered Indian startups for its 2026 Play Accelerator India cohort, spanning healthcare, agritech, gaming, fintech and education.