Latest news with #Arivihan
Mint
10-08-2025
- Business
- Mint
Prosus bets on India's next startup wave—everyday AI
Dutch investing giant Prosus NV's venture capital arm is training its sights in India on a specific kind of artificial intelligence startup—those developing user-facing AI tools and services. In its latest annual report, Prosus said the next wave of value from AI would come from the application layer, 'where AI is embedded into business workflows". In other words: AI-first startups. Prosus recently invested in two Indian AI startups geared towards the application layer: Arivihan, an AI-driven learning platform, and CodeKarma, a productivity tool for software developers. 'I think the Indian market is very large. There are over 200 million annual shoppers and 500 million people have access to the internet. A playground at that scale isn't available anywhere else in the world," Dhruv Gupta, investor at Prosus, told Mint in an interview. Prosus led Arivihan's $4.2 million pre-Series A fundraising round alongside Accel and GSF Ventures in July—its first edtech investment in India since it wrote off its $530 million investment in Byju's in June last year. The Indore-based Arivihan's AI-driven learning platform offers coaching for school students through a mobile app, focusing on tier-2 cities and beyond. Last week, the Dutch firm, alongside Accel and Xeed Ventures, co-led Bengaluru-based CodeKarma's $2.5 million pre-seed fundraise, with AI-focused SenseAI Ventures and Stargazer Ventures participating. Prosus, which had over $152 billion of assets in 2024, previously invested in US-headquartered Ema Unlimited, an 'universal AI' employee startup founded by Surojit Chatterjee, who sits on ecommerce firm Meesho's board of directors and was a senior vice president and head of product at Flipkart. The venture capital firm has also invested in Bengaluru-based SpotDraft, which automates the contract lifecycle management system. Prosus's other AI application investments globally include which provides AI-powered software solutions to e-commerce businesses, and Nexad, which is building an AI-native advertising system. Accel, Lightspeed India, and PeakXV Partners, too, have been evaluating more application-layer AI startups this year. 'The sheer diversity that India sees in terms of languages (and) cultural context, offers stress testing to models in the market. In that sense, the application layer offers a much richer set of opportunities for founders to keep building in," said Gupta. Prosus has also invested in companies operating in the middleware layer of AI, which acts as a bridge between AI applications and models or services. In May, the VC firm invested an undisclosed sum in Deccan AI, a Palo Alto-based startup founded by a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The starup creates high-quality datasets for AI model training and evaluation. While Deccan AI's top executives are in the US, a majority of its workforce is in India, according to the startup's LinkedIn page. CodeKarma too straddles the middleware layer of AI. 'The company lies somewhere in the middle, and that highlights how you can't exactly put companies into buckets right now," Gupta said. 'The potential for AI applications in India is immense, given the digital transformation journey many enterprises have undertaken, though we don't have a specific figure for the India market," said Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at technology consulting firm Gartner. Sharper focus, uniquely Indian At the core of Prosus's decision to invest in Indian AI startups is that the founders of these companies are building products unique to the country. 'Some of the business models coming out of (India), you won't find them in the West. If there is a problem which is deeply Indian, is there a founder who can take a shot at solving the problem? That is where our investment thesis tries to hone in on," Gupta said. Prosus will continue with its focus on lifestyle and consumer startups in India, particularly companies that are working on personalising edtech, content generation, and commerce. 'We feel that there could be a horizontal layer on top of everyday commercial applications, which can… become your go-to for all your daily commercial activities," said Gupta. Prosus's India portfolio includes e-commerce platform Meesho, ride-hailing company Rapido, and food-delivery and quick-commerce provider Swiggy. In 2024-25, Prosus deployed $400 million in capital across 40 investments globally. Of the capital deployed, $88 million went towards AI-related investments. In this fiscal year as well, the firm remains 'focused on early-stage opportunities and supported existing portfolio companies across all regions", it said in its annual report. In fact, Prosus is quite bullish on agentic AI—self-learning systems that can learn and operate on their own with little-to-no human interference. In a report co-authored with a startup data intelligence provider, Prosus highlighted that agentic AI startups attracted $2.8 billion in VC funding globally. The technology is expected to account for 10% of all AI funding in 2025, hitting an estimated $6.7 billion by the end of the year, it said. Indian VCs, too, have tapped into the trend. SiftHub, and CoRover raised money for their agentic AI efforts last year. This year, Atomicwork raised $25 million in a Series A fundraising round, roping in influential US investor Khosla Ventures to its capitalisation table. Gartner predicts that by 2030, up to 50% of enterprise application software offerings will include some agentic AI features, up from less than 5% in 2025.
Entrepreneur
01-08-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Prosus and Accel Lead USD 4.17 Mn Round in Arivihan for AI-Driven Education Push
With the new funds, Arivihan plans to deepen its focus on Class 12 students preparing for state boards, CBSE, and NEET examinations, particularly from tier II and tier III cities. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Bengaluru-based edtech startup Arivihan has secured USD 4.17 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Prosus and Accel, with participation from GSF Investors. The startup intends to use the fresh capital to strengthen its artificial intelligence capabilities, introduce more language options, and expand its marketing and distribution network in three additional Indian states. The investment follows an earlier funding of USD 750,000 raised through Accel's Atoms program. With the new funds, Arivihan plans to deepen its focus on Class 12 students preparing for state boards, CBSE, and NEET examinations, particularly from tier II and tier III cities. "India has 250 million students, yet quality personalised education remains a privilege for few," said Ritesh Singh, Co-founder and chief executive officer of Arivihan. "Traditional coaching models cannot scale to serve Bharat's massive student population at affordable price points. Our AI-first approach makes education accessible and truly personalized for every student, regardless of their location or economic background." Founded in 2024 by Ritesh Singh Chandel, Sonu Kumar, and Rushabh Kothari, Arivihan offers an AI-powered learning platform aimed at students from smaller towns and rural areas. Its services include interactive video lectures, instant doubt-solving, and AI-generated study plans tailored to each learner's needs. The platform currently supports preparation for Class 12 State Board, CBSE, and NEET examinations. According to company data, over 150 students using Arivihan scored above 90 percent in Class 12 board exams, with four securing places in the state's top ten merit list. The startup also reports that students improved their performance by an average of 42 percent within 30 days of joining. A significant 80 percent of its user base comes from rural or tier III regions. Dhruv Gupta, investor at Prosus, said the company was drawn to Arivihan's AI-native model and its potential to deliver scalable, personalised education. "Arivihan stood out as a platform purpose-built for India's aspirational students, combining deep personalisation with broad impact," Gupta noted. Accel investor Anagh Prasad observed that generative AI is reshaping the edtech landscape in India. "Edtech in India has long struggled with cookie cutter solutions and often unsustainable business models. The advent of GenAI changes both dramatically, as seen in Arivihan's traction and student outcomes so far," Prasad said. Arivihan faces competition from other personalised learning platforms in India, including ConveGenius, iPrep, Embibe, and Vedantu.
Time of India
31-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Edtech firm Arivihan raises $4.17 million from Prosus, Accel
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Arivihan, an edtech firm that offers automated, personalised coaching for school students, has raised $4.17 million in a funding round led by Dutch investment firm Prosus and Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm Accel The round also saw participation from GSF funds will be used for expansion into three new states, growing its AI research and language support capabilities, and strengthening its on-ground marketing and distribution efforts.'When we went to tier II cities, we found that 65% of the students were from Hindi-medium backgrounds. There weren't many platforms catering to them, as most didn't offer content or doubt-solving support in Hindi, especially at an affordable price,' cofounder and chief executive Ritesh Singh Chandel told in 2021 by Chandel, Sonu Kumar, and Rushabh Kothari, the Indore, Madhya Pradesh-based company provides a fully automated artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tutoring platform that offers personalised learning through interactive video lessons, instant doubt resolution, and AI-generated study plans in regional languages.'If you use any LLM directly, they are very general. They don't provide answers tailored to our students' syllabus, their level of understanding, or their language. That's why we use our open-source model, which we have fine-tuned with millions of data points derived from our syllabus to suit our students,' he said. The platform answers queries in both Hindi and primarily caters to Class 12 students from tier II and tier III cities and rural areas, offering support for those preparing for State Board exams, CBSE, and NEET.'We started with the class 12 State Board exam in Madhya Pradesh and received a great response. Then we launched for NEET and saw a similarly positive response,' Chandel said, adding that the company has now begun expanding to Rajasthan and plans to further expand to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and company plans to expand its academic team, bring on board experienced NEET faculty, and strengthen its workforce across product, marketing, and engineering roles. This comes amid a broader push by edtech startups to invest in AI, which is driving personalised learning, adaptive assessments, and automated content creation.'In FY25, we sold around 15,000 subscriptions, which generated a revenue of around Rs 3.25 crore…We are resolving a monthly query of around seven lakh with the help of AI with 97% accuracy,' Chandel year, the startup is targeting between 80,000 and one lakh company had earlier raised $750,000 in a previous round from Accel 's seed-stage programme, on the investment, Dhruv Gupta, investor at Prosus, said, 'At Prosus, we've been actively exploring breakthrough applications of AI across sectors, and education remains one of the most compelling frontiers.''Edtech in India has long struggled with cookie-cutter solutions and often unsustainable business models. The advent of GenAI changes both dramatically, which has been visible in Arivihan's traction and student outcomes so far,' said Anagh Prasad, investor at Accel.
