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QwikBuild raised $2.3 Mn in a pre-seed round led by Japan-listed Globalway The startup will use the funding to expand its enterprise AI platform across the US and Southeast Asia QwikBuild also announced a JV with Globalway to enter Japan’s enterprise software market Bengaluru-based enterprise AI startup QwikBuild has raised $2.3 Mn (around ₹22 Cr) in a pre-seed funding round led by Japanese tech major Globalway, along with participation from Blume Ventures, DeVC, Marsshot and angel investors Lalit Keshre, founder of Groww, and Curefoods’ CEO Ankit Nagori. The startup will use the fresh capital primarily to fuel its go-to-market (GTM) activities. This will include setting up a team in the US as well as expanding operations across South East Asia. Besides the investment, QwikBuild also announced that it is forming a joint venture (JV) with Globalway to enter Japan’s enterprise software market. Expected to become operational by the end of 2026, the JV will take QwikBuild’s platform to Globalway’s existing and prospective enterprise customers in Japan. Founded in 2025 by ex-slice executive Pradeep Ayyagari, QwikBuild builds enterprise software and AI agents that can bring down the software development and deployment significantly. The startup claims to be serving more than 100 enterprises across India, Southeast Asia, the US and Dubai. It says that about 10-12% of its clients are large enterprises, while about 30% are smaller businesses that use the platform to deploy softwares without setting up dedicated technology teams. QwikBuild’s Enterprise AI Play QwikBuild combines custom software development with AI-driven workflow automation. Its platform allows businesses to build applications from scratch, replacing legacy systems or custom software layers on top of tools offered by giants like SAP and Salesforce. According to Ayyagari, the SaaS startup focuses on codifying business decisions rather than automating individual tasks alone. For instance, a financial services company may need to decide which customers to contact, what filters to apply and which scripts to use for different customer segments. While a specialised AI startup may automate the calling process here, QwikBuild will look at codifying the decisions that determine which calls should be made in the first place. Businesses can then autonomously deploy voice agents or other tools to execute these workflows, either through QwikBuild or other providers. “Tech has always been the enabler. But adoption of tech was always the hardest problem that I have seen,” Ayyagari said, drawing on his experience at Flipkart, Swiggy and Slice. QwikBuild aims to address this gap by allowing business teams to build and test applications as their requirements evolve, without repeatedly relying on engineering teams. Ayyagari cited a recent customer meeting in which a business team discussed changes to an application. “The agent understood what the context was. The feature was immediately built within the next five minutes,” he said. “Tech and business can work parallelly together,” he added. He also pointed to the potential for enterprise AI adoption. “Hardly 1% of enterprises have adopted AI. It’s a huge market that needs to be unlocked,” he said, adding that the software needed to automate businesses over the next five years would be “at least 10X” in price when compared with what’s available today. The startup is betting that businesses will increasingly turn to platforms combining software development, integrations and AI agents to automate operations. This is also reflected in recent enterprise AI investment trends in the Indian startup ecosystem, For instance, enterprise AI and automation startup RapidCanvas netted $29 Mn last week. On a broader level, Indian AI startup funding surged 265% YoY to $438 Mn in Q3 2026, according to Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report. However, Inc42’s survey of 85+ institutional investors found that 63% saw some degree of froth in AI valuations, with about half of them expecting a correction within 18 months. Despite these concerns, investors see vertical AI as the biggest value driver over the next five years, followed by AI hardware and semiconductors and AI-led IT and business services.
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