India’s 132nd Unicorn, Groww’s Q1 Profit Run & More

Emergent Vibe Codes To Unicorn Tag

Emergent has joined India’s unicorn parade. The AI startup entered the coveted club after a $130 Mn round pushed its valuation beyond the $1.5 Bn mark. While Emergent achieved this milestone within two years of its inception, can it turn vibe coding into a durable business?

Rapid Funding Velocity: Led by Creaegis with participation from marquee names like SoftBank and Lightspeed, the round will be utilised to scale hiring, AI research and international expansion. With this, Emergent has become the sixth Indian unicorn of 2026 and the third AI startup to cross the $1 Bn valuation mark, after Krutrim and Sarvam. 

From Apps To Ops: Founded in 2024, Emergent started as a vibe coding platform but has since evolved into a broader AI ecosystem that lets businesses build agents that can handle multiple operational tasks. By building its orchestration layer in-house and relying on open-source AI models, it aims to become the AI operation system for small businesses globally.

The Solid Ground: The startup claims that revenue and paying users have both grown 4X since the last round, while customer acquisition costs have fallen and retention has stayed strong. It is now clocking an ARR of $120 Mn, with roughly 66% revenue coming from North America and Europe. 

So, as Emergent basks in the unicorn glory, here is all about the AI startup entering the billion-dollar valuation club…

From The Editor’s Desk

Groww’s Q1 Profit Run

• The investment tech giant’s consolidated net profit zoomed 94.3% YoY to ₹735 Cr in Q1 FY27 on the back of improving margins, increasing adoption of newer products like MTF, and surging top line. Operating revenue zoomed 66% YoY to ₹1,501.4 Cr.
• In Q1 FY27, the stock broking platform claimed to have added 1.2 Lakh net clients despite industry-wide slowdown, while mutual fund assets AUM stood at ₹1.9 Lakh Cr. 
• Meanwhile, disbursements through its NBFC arm, Groww Creditserv Technology, grew 26.1% QoQ, with loans against securities contributing 35% of the total.

Ather Eyes ₹2,700 Cr

• The EV maker’s board has approved a proposal to raise up to ₹1,200 Cr via a preferential issue, which will combine both equity shares and convertible warrants. While shares will be allotted at ₹1,230 apiece, 79.36 Lakh warrants will be priced at ₹1,260 each. 
• Under the preferential issue, promoter Hero MotoCorp will invest ₹959.99 Cr, while India-Japan Fund, via NIIF, will invest about ₹200 Cr. Cofounders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain will also invest ₹20 Cr each.
• Not stopping there, the EV maker also opened its qualified institutional placement, setting the floor price at ₹1,169.7 per equity share. While Ather did not specify the QIP size, it was previously looking to raise ₹1,500 Cr via the placement.

Anmasa Bags ₹30 Cr

• The D2C grocery brand has raised $3.1 Mn in its seed round led by new investor Fireside Ventures to enter new cities, open new stores, strengthen its tech stack and build an ERP system to track its operations.
• Founded in 2024, Anmasa claims to sell minimally-processed staples and pantry products, including flour, spices, edible oils, rice and ghee. With 200 SKUs under its belt, the omnichannel brand currently operates nine stores in Gurugram and Noida. 
• Processing around 800 daily online orders, the startup claims to have grown 23X in the past year. It also claims that most of its outlets have achieved positive EBITDA at the store level, and has identified 25 cities for potential expansion over the next five years.

BigBasket To Retreat From 36 Cities

• The quick commerce platform plans to restrict its operations to 40 profitable cities from 76 currently. This comes after Big Basket was reprimanded by parent Tata Sons’ chairman Noel Tata over high cash burn and mounting losses. 
• The newly-appointed CEO Amit Nanda has been tasked with ensuring that the company achieves profitability. He is focusing on key areas like customer, pricing and assortment, with faster decision making, higher accountability and day-to-day execution in focus. 
• Founded in 2011, BigBasket was one of the first players in the online grocery market, but failed to pivot quickly to capture the quick commerce boom. As a result, it lags behind competitors in dark store count and order volumes even as losses continue to balloon.

India’s Largest Nuclear Plant Hacked

• Thousands of files linked to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant have surfaced on the dark web after a ransomware group claimed to have breached systems belonging to Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, one of the project’s contractors.
• Ransomware group World Leaks published nearly 19,000 files allegedly related to the nuclear power plant. The files include blueprints of parts of the facility, supplier details, inspection records, equipment reviews and insurance documents.
• World Leaks is a ransomware group known for publishing stolen corporate data when victims refuse to pay ransom demands. Earlier this year, the group also claimed responsibility for leaking data, linked to Apple, allegedly stolen from Tata Group.

Inc42 Markets

Inc42 Startup Spotlight

How Bolna Is Building The Rails For Voice AI

Voice AI is moving quickly from demos to deployment, but the real bottleneck lies behind the scenes. Enterprises need speech recognition, telephony, language models and automation to work together reliably at scale. Bolna is building an orchestration layer to make this easy.

Democratising Voice AI: Founded in 2024, Bolna helps enterprises launch and manage voice AI agents without building everything from scratch. Its pitch is simple: businesses can upload a transcript, set up an agent, buy a number and start calling in under 30 minutes.

The Neutrality Edge: Bolna AI’s biggest differentiator is its model-neutral approach, which lets enterprises plug into the best speech-to-text, text-to-speech, LLM and telephony providers without being locked into a single stack. This gives customers the flexibility to switch models as performance improves, while keeping their voice AI workflows intact.

Finding Its Feet: The startup claims that it has already onboarded more than 2,500 paying customers, including around 100 enterprises. Revenue primarily comes mainly from sectors like ecommerce, BFSI and education. Not stopping there, the platform is now deploying tools for sales, support and complex workflow automation.

With India’s voice AI economy expected to become a nearly $1 Bn market by 2030, can Bolna become the default operating system for enterprise voice AI?

Infographic Of The Day

Premium cookware is becoming one of India’s fastest-evolving consumer categories. From legacy giants like Hawkins to emerging players like The Indus Valley, everyone is chasing this brewing ₹555 Cr opportunity. Here is all about it…

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