30 Startups To Watch: Startups That Caught Our Eye In August 2026

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August turned out to be yet another eventful month for the Indian startup ecosystem. The month marked multiple mega rounds, including River Mobility’s $120 Mn infusion and Navi’s $100 Mn maiden institutional fundraise. AstroTalk also joined the unicorn club, becoming India's 133rd unicorn. August also underscored the growing investor interest in AI and advanced hardware, with both sectors featuring prominently across the funding activity. Overall, Indian startups raised $857.4 Mn last month, as funding activity remained concentrated around growth and early stage bets. Beyond funding, August also saw IPO activity gather pace, with startups increasingly moving towards public markets. Atomberg filed its DRHP and Shiprocket listed on the bourses, while SEBI cleared the IPOs of Garuda Aerospace, PlaySimple Games and Rediff. Simultaneously, policy support continued to shape opportunities for India's deeptech and technology startups. The Centre notified the ₹1.28 Lakh Cr Semicon 2.0 scheme while stepping up support for early-stage deeptech ventures through MeitY's GENESIS Entrepreneur-in-Residence programme. However, the month also brought forth its own set of challenges. The government's ₹1 Lakh Cr Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund came under the spotlight after questions were raised over its first allocation, highlighting the growing role of public capital in funding India's deeptech ambitions. Against this backdrop, Inc42 is back with the latest edition of its flagship “30 Startups To Watch” series, where we spotlight promising early stage ventures that caught our eye this month. As India celebrated its 80th I-Day in August, Inc42’s 74th edition of 30 Startups To Watch, brings together startups working across sectors such as AI, deeptech, spacetech, climate tech, defence, EVs, consumer and enterprise tech. From companies using microgravity for pharmaceutical manufacturing to startups building AI companions, autonomous drone infrastructure and new-age consumer brands, these ventures are tackling problems across some of India's fastest-evolving markets. So, without further ado, here are the new-age companies that made the cut for this edition of Inc42's 30 Startups To Watch. Editor’s Note: The list below is not a ranking of any kind. We have listed the startups alphabetically. Acres of Ice | Building Seasonal Ice Reservoirs In Ladakh, water is abundant when farmers do not need it and scarce when they do. Winter snowfall and glacial flows provide water during the colder months, but by spring, which is when farmers begin sowing, rising temperatures, erratic snowfall and retreating glaciers can leave mountain communities without enough water for irrigation. The challenge is particularly acute in high-altitude regions where conventional water-storage infrastructure can be expensive and difficult to build. Founded in 2023 by Suryanarayanan Balasubramanian and Basit Afzal, Leh-based Acres of Ice is building technology to bridge this seasonal gap. Its Automated Ice Reservoirs (AIRs) channel winter water through gravity-fed pipelines, freeze it into large monitored ice structures and release the meltwater during the spring and summer growing season. Sensors and automated controls help optimise freezing and monitor reservoirs remotely. The startup has also expanded into automated micro-irrigation, using weather, soil and water sensors to schedule irrigation and control pumps and valves. The startup claims that its AIR systems stored 18.4 Mn litres across seven sites in Ladakh during the 2024-25 season, while its irrigation systems have achieved 60-70% water savings and 70-80% labour reduction. The opportunity extends beyond Ladakh: Acres of Ice estimates that around 14 Mn people across more than 14,000 villages in 16 countries face similar water-security challenges in high-altitude regions. With deployments envisioned across the Hindu Kush Himalayas, the Andes, and the Alps, the startup is effectively turning an indigenous water-storage practice into a data-driven, replicable climate-adaptation system. AlgoFET | Autonomous Docking Stations For Drones Drones may be getting smarter and more autonomous, but tactical drones used for surveillance, infrastructure inspection or agriculture still need to land, recharge or swap batteries before taking off again. These processes require human intervention, creating a bottleneck for operators looking to run fleets continuously and remotely. Founded in 2023 by Ankit Mishra, Bengaluru-based deeptech startup AlgoFET is building the ground infrastructure needed to keep industrial drones operational with minimal human intervention. Its technology stack includes autonomous docking stations, intelligent battery management systems, high-power charging infrastructure, embedded electronics and cloud-based fleet monitoring. Its AlgoDOCK enables drones to land and recharge autonomously, while AlgoBMS provides real-time battery health and diagnostics. Incubated at ARTPARK, IISc, AlgoFET claims to have deployed 2,000+ units. It has an order pipeline of more than 4,000 units and an order book worth around ₹100 Cr. The dronetech startup counts drone manufacturers and the Indian Army among its customers. In August 2026, the startup raised ₹15 Cr, which it plans to use for product development, manufacturing, IP and expansion into defence, enterprise and international markets. India’s drone ecosystem is expanding across defence, agriculture, surveillance, logistics and infrastructure, with the drone market projected to reach $3.2 Bn by 2030. With companies such as Skylark Labs, Raphe mPhibr, and ideaForge building drone hardware and autonomous systems, AlgoFET is targeting the layer beneath to enable those fleets to operate around the clock. Antimattr | Betting On A Screenless AI Future AI assistants are becoming increasingly capable, but using them in the real world still largely means pulling out a phone or sitting in front of a computer. For the founders of Bengaluru-based Antimattr, the problem became obvious while building voice agents: the AI worked, but noisy environments such as cafés, airports and open offices made voice interactions unreliable. Founded in 2025 by Sridipto Ghosh and Sirsho Chakraborty, Antimattr is building Project Mnemosyne, a voice-first computing system designed around memory and productivity. The hardware combines a smart ring with a pair of voice-isolation earphones. The ring can capture thoughts, record and summarise conversations and control AI agents, while the earphones use six microphones and proprietary voice-isolation technology to enable clearer conversations and dictation in noisy environments. It has already attracted backing from Y Combinator, which invested $500K in the startup, along with Nikhil Kamath’s WTFund and gener8tor, and it recently joined YC's Fall 2026 batch. In India’s AI wearable market, projected to reach $19.1 Bn by 2033, Antimattr is betting that voice can become the primary interface to AI without putting a screen between the user and the machine. Its longer-term roadmap extends beyond Mnemosyne to a privacy-focused AI computer and eventually an AI-native vehicle. Auxobit Aerospace | Autonomous Systems For Defence Modern warfare is increasingly shifting from large, human-operated platforms towards smaller, autonomous and networked systems that can provide surveillance, deliver tactical payloads and operate in environments where putting personnel at risk is difficult. India’s push for indigenous defence technology is creating room for startups to build these systems locally. Founded in 2023, Maharashtra-based Auxobit Aerospace develops unmanned systems for aerospace and defence applications, spanning aerial drones, autonomous surface vehicles, counter-drone systems and swarm technologies. The startup's portfolio includes Hell Fire, a swarm-enabled aerial platform designed for tactical payload delivery; Mystic One, an autonomous surface vehicle for hydrographic and bathymetric surveys; and other kinds of autonomous aerial platforms. The startup claims to be building capabilities across unmanned surface vehicles, submersibles, helicopters, counter-drone systems and loitering-munition swarms. The opportunity is expanding as India builds out its domestic defence-drone ecosystem, with demand coming from surveillance, border security, tactical operations and maritime applications. Auxobit is entering a competitive field that includes ideaForge, NewSpace Research & Technologies, Raphe mPhibr and Garuda Aerospace, but its broader focus across air, surface and autonomous defence systems gives it a different moat. base14 | Dedicated Performance Dashboard For AI Teams As software systems become more complex, engineering teams often use multiple tools to monitor logs, metrics, performance and traces. This creates fragmented data, increases costs and makes it harder to find the root cause of problems. Bengaluru-based base14 is building a unified observability platform to give engineering teams a single view of their software infrastructure. Founded in 2024 by Nilakanta Mallick, Ranjan Sakalley and Irfan Shah, the startup brings logs, metrics, traces, APM and LLM telemetry into a single data lake through an OpenTelemetry-native architecture. Its flagship product, Scout, uses this unified data layer to help teams monitor applications, identify anomalies and debug production issues. The platform claims to offer full-cardinality data without sampling while reducing observability costs significantly compared with legacy platforms. The startup is also expanding into AI-native developer infrastructure with Scope, a prompt-management and evaluation platform that lets teams version, test and deploy prompts while tracking latency, cost and output quality. With early customers, including Glomo, DPDZero and Zinc Learning Labs, base14 is tapping the growing application performance management market in India, which generated $291.1 Mn in revenue in 2024 and is expected to reach $723.4 Mn by 2030 as AI scales, driving demand for observability and granular data insights. Bruno Milano | Building India’s Affordable Premium Watch Market For a generation of consumers increasingly buying fashion and lifestyle products online, watches are becoming as much about design and self-expression as they are about telling time. Yet the affordable end of the market is crowded with mass-market brands, while premium international labels can quickly push prices out of reach. Bruno Milano is trying to occupy the space in between with design-led watches at accessible price points. Founded in 2024 by Rachit Jain and Saurabh Agarwal, Noida-based Bruno Milano is a D2C watch brand offering hand-finished quartz and chronograph timepieces, generally priced between ₹2,000 and ₹5,000. Its watches use Japanese quartz movements, with collections including Vittorio Chrono, Ambrosiana Chic and Duomo Heritage. The brand sells through its website as well as ecommerce and quick commerce platforms. It also offers customised watches for corporate gifting. The startup raised ₹7.5 Cr in August to expand across India, launch new collections, and strengthen ecommerce and quick commerce distribution. India’s watch market is projected to reach $7.52 Bn by 2031. While the mass segment currently accounts for nearly three-fourths of this opportunity, premiumisation and online shopping are creating room for new brands to target younger consumers with design-led products. CNN Foods | Traditional Desi Beverages Get A Gen Z Makeover The great Indian beverage aisle is packed with colas, juices, energy drinks and an expanding crop of better-for-you beverages, but traditional Indian flavours have often remained confined to local and regional formats. CNN Foods is trying to bring those flavours into contemporary packaging and formats while keeping them accessible to mass-market consumers. Founded in 2024 by Chirag Wadhwa, Delhi-based CNN Foods is building a portfolio of beverage brands centred on familiar Indian flavours and unconventional formats. Its flagship Phirki Zero is a zero-sugar, zero-calorie, zero-caffeine take on jeera masala soda, made with real lemon, while Papa Nata combines a fruit drink with coconut jelly for a drink-and-snack proposition. The early traction has been notable. Phirki Zero, launched in March 2026, sold roughly 2.5 Lakh cans in its first two months, with around 80% of sales coming through quick commerce platforms. The brand has since expanded onto Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, alongside modern trade and kirana outlets. India’s non-alcoholic beverages market is estimated at $34.7 Bn in 2025 and is projected to reach $69 Bn by 2034, growing at a 7.9% CAGR. Carbonated soft drinks remain one of the largest categories, while consumers are increasingly seeking lower-sugar and more differentiated formats. CopperPilot | Bringing AI To The Hardware Design Process Building a new electronic product can involve weeks of repetitive engineering work before a prototype is even ready. Hardware engineers have to sift through datasheets, identify compatible components, wire schematics, design PCB layouts, check design rules and repeatedly move between exploratory data analysis (EDA) tools and manufacturer documentation. Unlike software development, where AI coding tools have rapidly automated much of this work, hardware design has remained largely manual. Founded in 2026 by Aditya NG, Anish Harsha and Mohit Bagur, Bengaluru-based CopperPilot is building an AI copilot for hardware engineers that works inside the design tools they already use. The startup can help engineers search for components, parse datasheets, generate schematics, place and route components, conduct design reviews and generate firmware scaffolding. The startup is still early, but says teams across robotics, wearables and IoT are already running pilots. It has been developing an end-to-end workflow that can take an idea through schematic design, PCB layout, and firmware. The opportunity comes as electronics, robotics, EVs and IoT drive demand for faster hardware development, while EDA remains dominated by established players such as Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA. CopperPilot is taking an AI-first approach to this workflow, betting that the same shift from manual engineering to AI-assisted development that transformed software can make hardware development faster, more iterative and accessible to smaller engineering teams. Coremantle | Improving Data Accessibility For Indic Language AI Models AI models are becoming increasingly capable, but their performance is only as good as the data they are trained on. This is particularly challenging for India, where speech and language data is fragmented across hundreds of languages, dialects and accents, while much of the available training data does not adequately capture how Indians actually communicate. Coremantle is trying to tackle this problem at the data layer. Founded by Arvind Pani and Vivekanand Pani, the Bengaluru-based startup is building what it describes as a data intelligence layer for AI, with an initial focus on Indian languages. The founders previously built Reverie Language Technologies, which spent more than a decade developing language technology for the Indian market. At Coremantle, the focus has shifted from building language applications to sourcing and creating the underlying datasets needed to train better AI models. The company is particularly focused on ethically sourced, consented and naturally occurring language data, including speech, conversations and regional-language content. It is already looking to work with podcast creators and independent content producers to license audio and video for AI training. The opportunity is emerging as Indian-language AI adoption accelerates, but high-quality Indic-language training data remains limited. Coremantle is entering a global market that includes data providers such as Scale AI, Appen and Defined.ai, while taking a more India-specific approach. CUNIN | Making Fragrance A Wearable Expression Perfume has traditionally been sold as a beauty product, housed within the home and applied before stepping out. But younger consumers are increasingly treating fashion and beauty products as extensions of their identity, creating room for brands that sell aesthetics, storytelling and community alongside the product. Founded in 2025 by Kunal Shukla, Amish Bibhu, and Afsal Ashraf, former executives at the fashion brand NEWME, CUNIN is building a Gen Z lifestyle brand that begins with fragrance. Its first collection, The World of Antonyms, features products such as IM-Perfect, DIS-Loyal, MIS-Placed and MIS-Aligned, with the brand using these identities across its products, packaging and storytelling. The startup is also introducing what it calls “carryable perfume accessories” that are fragrances designed to be worn, clipped onto clothing or bags and carried as visible accessories rather than kept inside conventional perfume bottles. CUNIN is currently selling through its D2C website and plans to expand its fragrance portfolio, offline presence and eventually adjacent lifestyle categories. CUNIN has raised $450K in pre-seed funding, which it plans to utilise towards product development, team building, brand creation and offline expansion. The startup is entering an increasingly crowded Indian fragrance market, where brands such as Plum, Bella Vita, Renee, House of EM5 and The Man Company have helped make fragrances more accessible to younger online consumers. The overall fragrance market in India was worth about $1.14 Bn in 2025 and is projected to reach $3.48 Bn by 2034. DRIVN | Financing India’s Heavy EV Transition India’s electric mobility story has largely been driven by two- and three-wheelers, while the electrification of buses and heavy-duty trucks has progressed much more slowly. The economics is a major hurdle: an electric truck or bus can cost around 2.5X its ICE equivalent, while long financing tenures and charging infrastructure remain limited. This is the gap Gurugram-based DRIVN is targeting. Founded in 2025 by Manav Bansal, Alpna Jain and Madhujeet Chimni, the startup acquires and owns electric commercial vehicles, primarily intercity buses and medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and leases them to fleet operators. Its model combines financing with charging infrastructure, fleet operations, battery health monitoring, and end-of-life asset management. Earlier this year, the startup secured an $80 Mn financing commitment from Nomura, taking its total funding to about $140 Mn, and has been building a pipeline of commercial EV deployments. DRIVN is partnering with Energy In Motion on 1,000 electric heavy commercial vehicles. While players such as Mufin Green Finance, Alt Mobility and Kazam address parts of EV financing or fleet electrification, DRIVN is taking a more capital-intensive, full-lifecycle approach. Its pitch is that owning assets and combining financing, technology, and operations can remove the upfront cost barrier that has kept large commercial EVs from scaling. Echovane | Automating Consumer Research With AI Agents For companies launching a product, campaign or new market, understanding consumers can take weeks of recruiting respondents, conducting interviews, coordinating moderators, translating conversations and analysing results. The process becomes even more cumbersome when research spans multiple countries or requires niche participants. Echovane is trying to compress this entire research workflow into an AI-native system. Founded in 2025 by Smriti Gupta, Vipul Nair and Himadri Roy, Bengaluru-based Echovane uses AI agents to conduct consumer research end-to-end. Its platform can design studies, recruit and verify participants, conduct interviews, surveys and ethnographic observations, analyse qualitative and quantitative data, and turn findings into reports, dashboards and other decision-ready outputs. Its flagship EchoAI can conduct hundreds of interviews simultaneously across 65+ languages, while multimodal capabilities allow it to analyse not just what consumers say but their behaviour and facial expressions during research. Echovane says it has worked with companies, including P&G, Haleon and Kantar and can access a network of more than 20 Mn respondents across 150+ countries. The startup recently raised $1 Mn in its first external funding round in India’s insights-as-a-service market, projected to generate $1.22 Bn by 2030. The opportunity comes as brands increasingly seek faster, continuous consumer insights, while traditional market research remains labour-intensive. Hulp | Helps Manage Things That Clutter The Day Life may be getting more convenient, but managing a household can still feMediael like a full-time job. The founders of Hulp call this the “invisible tax” on families: the time spent managing dozens of small tasks that, individually, seem trivial but collectively eat into evenings and weekends. Founded in April 2026 by Tarun Mathur, Neha Kulwal and Vishal Khutel, Gurugram-based Hulp is building an AI-powered personal-assistance and concierge platform for urban households. Users can send a request through WhatsApp or the Hulp app, including via voice note, after which a dedicated personal assistant researches, calls, books, coordinates and follows up to complete the task. AI handles workflow management, matching and tracking, while humans remain responsible for execution. Hulp supports more than 30 categories, from documentation and home management to travel, healthcare, errands and bookings. It has completed 3,000+ tasks, onboarded 100 families in Delhi NCR and raised $2.6 Mn. At a time when India’s home-services market is projected to grow at 9.2% CAGR through 2032, startups such as Faff, Aviha and Pinch are building concierge and personal-assistance services for consumers, signalling growing willingness to pay for convenience. Hulp is taking this a step further by focusing on families and building context around the household’s preferences. With plans to expand to 10+ cities and serve 2.5 Lakh families by 2028, Hulp is betting that personal assistance can become an everyday layer of urban family life rather than an occasional luxury. Invisel | Bringing Magic Of Nano-Coatings To Homes Keeping a home clean is one thing; keeping expensive surfaces looking new is another. Hard-water marks on bathroom glass, stains on upholstery and everyday wear on marble and other surfaces create a recurring maintenance problem. Pune-based Invisel is betting that consumers can prevent this damage rather than repeatedly clean it. Founded in 2024 by Atharva Ulangwar and Sumedh Yeolekar, Invisel brings nano-coating technology used in industrial applications to household surfaces. Its coatings are designed to protect glass, tiles, fabric, leather, marble and metal from stains, hard-water damage and wear. The company also offers professional bathroom and sofa-coating services. The startup sells products directly to consumers, while also working with furniture OEMs and offering professional application services. Invisel manufactures its formulations in-house at its Pune facility, where it handles formulation, blending, filling and batch-level quality testing The startup claims to have served 60,000 customers across 900 pincodes, generating ₹5.2 Cr in FY26 revenue profitably without external capital. It recently raised ₹4 Cr in its first external funding round led by IAN Angel Fund, with BeyondSeed and FAAD Capital participating. The startup plans to use the capital to scale manufacturing and R&D, expand online and offline distribution, introduce five new product categories and grow its professional application network from three to 12 cities. It is also eyeing the UAE as its first international market. The opportunity is sizable, with India’s home-care market estimated at ₹6.66 Lakh Cr in 2025 and forecast to reach ₹8.16 Lakh Cr by 2030, driven by premiumisation and product innovation. Yet the surface-care segment remains dominated by incumbents such as Reckitt, HUL and ITC, with Reckitt alone commanding 69% of retail value sales. Invisel's bet is to avoid this crowded cleaning market altogether and create a new “preventive home care” category around nano-coatings. Jaipur Robotics | AI Solutions For Waste Composition Analysis Waste-to-energy plants turn non-recyclable waste into electricity, but unpredictable waste streams can damage equipment, disrupt combustion and force costly shutdowns. A shortage of trained operators adds to the challenge. Jaipur Robotics is using AI to tackle these problems at the point where waste enters the plant. Founded in 2024 by Ermes Zamboni and Nikhil Prakash, the Switzerland-based startup is developing a computer vision and deep learning platform for waste-to-energy facilities. Its system monitors waste pits in real time, identifies oversized or dangerous materials and alerts crane operators before they can cause damage. It also creates calorific-value maps that help operators mix waste more effectively, improving energy conversion and reducing emissions. Jaipur Robotics estimates that waste-to-energy plants can lose up to $4.3 Mn annually from operational inefficiencies, while the global waste-management market is worth more than $1 Tn. As plants look to automate operations and extract more energy from increasingly complex waste streams, Jaipur Robotics is betting that computer vision can become the intelligence layer connecting waste recognition, plant safety and energy optimisation. Keydroid | Turning Car Keys Into Smart Devices Car keys have remained largely unchanged even as cars have become increasingly connected and feature-rich. For owners of older or mid-range vehicles, adding modern features such as proximity access, remote controls and vehicle tracking often requires expensive aftermarket modifications. Founded in 2022 by Rajat Jaiswal, Noida-based Keydroid is trying to bridge this gap by turning conventional car keys into connected smart devices. The startup develops touchscreen-enabled smart keys that offer proximity-based locking and unlocking, remote vehicle controls, automatic window closing, vehicle tracking, and other security features. Keydroid currently offers a range of smart keys compatible with several car models, while also expanding into adjacent automotive accessories such as keyless entry systems, dashcams, trackers, and LED lighting. The startup has also been working on local manufacturing and R&D as it looks to build more products for India's automotive aftermarket. Rather than competing with automakers on connected-car technology, Keydroid is targeting the massive installed base of conventional vehicles that lack these features. The opportunity lies in India's growing appetite for car personalisation and aftermarket upgrades, with the automotive aftermarket projected to expand from $ 17.7 Bn in 2025 to $ 36.1 Bn by 2034. Neuromod Aqua | Engineering The Future Of Water Wastewater treatment projects are traditionally designed and built individually, making deployment expensive and time-consuming. Delhi NCR-based Neuromod Aqua is seeking to introduce a more standardised, product-like approach to the water infrastructure market. Founded in 2026 by Anuj Arora and Anand Dad, the startup develops modular treatment systems for sewage and industrial effluent. Its portfolio includes sewage treatment plants, effluent treatment plants, zero-liquid-discharge systems, reverse-osmosis plants and demineralisation systems. The startup says its systems are manufactured as standardised modules rather than being built from scratch at every customer site. It targets industries, real estate, hospitality, and infrastructure projects where water recycling and treatment are increasingly operational requirements. The opportunity is huge, as the wastewater treatment market in India is expected to be valued at $19.4 Bn by 2034 from $10.4 Bn currently, growing at a 7% CAGR, driven by water scarcity and the growing demand for clean water. OneRX AI| Specialised Evidence AI Platform For Doctors Doctors have access to an enormous volume of medical literature, but finding the relevant evidence quickly remains a practical challenge. OneRx is building an AI platform to help doctors and hospitals navigate that information. Founded in 2025 by Vivek Slaria, OnerRx is a medical AI platform for doctors to practice evidence-based medicine It unifies medical knowledge scattered across journals, clinical research papers, guidelines, and real-world evidence — delivering evidence-based insights to doctors at the point of care and enabling faster, more confident clinical decisions. Currently, its operations span Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Hyderabad, while its product is designed around clinical decision-making. In an increasingly crowded medical AI market with general-purpose assistants, OneRX is focused on evidence and clinical workflows. It is attempting to position AI as a research and decision-support layer for healthcare professionals in the Indian AI in healthcare market projected to reach $4.5 Bn by 2030. Profound | AI-Powered Platform For Hiring And Connections A resume or LinkedIn profile can tell recruiters what a professional has done, but it cannot really explain who they are, what they are good at or where they want to go next. Profound is betting that AI can turn a static professional identity into an active digital representative. Founded in 2026 by ex-Delhivery tech head Prashant Parashar and ex-Cleartrip chief business and growth officer Anuj Rathi, Profound is building AI-powered representatives for professionals, similar to the managers that represent actors, athletes and musicians. After a roughly 30-minute voice conversation, the platform learns about a user's expertise, experience, working style and career ambitions, and uses that context across professional use cases. The startup’