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A closed-loop sleep device built entirely in India just became the fastest Indian healthtech company to cross $1M on Kickstarter.

An Indian-US startup is building the interface layer that today's keyboards and touchscreens were never designed for.

Meet Ishaan, Vinit, and Jayanth, a team of young founder-operators with strong product depth, building the future of dating in the AI era. People are ready to move beyond algorithms that optimise for attention, and toward systems that optimise for outcomes. We cover our view of the category, why it’s ripe for reinvention, why we backed Wavelength. We also introduce our proprietary market map to frame where innovation is headed.

Co-authored by Anagh Prasad (VP, Accel) & Divita Aggarwal (Antler)

People are ready to move beyond algorithms that optimise for attention and toward systems that optimise for outcomes. This piece covers the current state of the matchmaking market, why it’s ripe for reinvention, and why India is uniquely positioned to lead the shift. Introducing our proprietary market map to frame where innovation is headed.

Built by parents and repeat founders, MyWonder is reimagining out-of-school learn and play - with the world’s first AI-native, screen-free “own” device for kids.

A curated snapshot of how India’s Consumer AI landscape is evolving: a simple behavioural lens of how we structure our view of Consumer AI, a Market Map of India’s Consumer AI startups, and areas we're excited about.

At Antler India, we’ve met over 1,000 fintech founders in recent years and backed 20+ breakout bets. We’re now excited about the ways AI will shape the future of fintech — and are especially keen to meet exceptional founders building in the areas we detail below.

A synthesis of over 40 Market Maps across sectors/spaces from leading experts and investors across the world.

Stance Health has raised $1M, led by Antler and General Catalyst, to build a full-stack musculoskeletal health platform.

Gowri Shankar, Associate Partner at Antler India, plays a key role in this game-changing report, revealing how India’s domestic software market is poised to surge to $100B by 2035.

ALT Fashion leverages AI to revolutionise fashion search and discovery, building the meta search engine for fashion.

TradeCredit is building supply chain finance products for fresh produce retailers.

HealthCRED raises $1.2 Million to revolutionise B2B Healthcare financing in India.

India’s first open mobility platform, Namma Yatri raises $11 million from Antler, Blume Ventures and Google.

HireBound is a conversational AI copilot that automates workflows for recruiters and develops proprietary resume intelligence.

Tradomate.one is building an AI-based trading analysis and automation platform for the next-gen trader.

Cautio is building the future of safety and security with intelligent video telematics.

Insurance Padosi is building a new-age insurance solution with a focus on customer education and personalized recommendations.

Meine Electric is revolutionizing renewable energy generation with iron-air fuel cells.

Storefox.ai is building the next-gen intelligence platform for offline retail.

Kubo Care aims to empower over 1 billion seniors globally to age safely and independently through innovative and non-invasive health monitoring solutions.

A new venture deal construct to catalyze your next raise, with your first raise.

Inside Before Day Zero, India’s most exclusive startup community for top talent figuring out their next move.

Read more about the founders that make the largest residency cohort to date in India.

As a founder, going from 0 to 1 is the most defining phase of your company-building journey. Read on to understand how Antler significantly increases your odds of success.

Read how Ankit and Veera arrived at the idea of solving business liability insurance for millions of MSMEs and startups.

This blog covers essential decision-making frameworks that can help founders design a successful ESOP plan.

IndiaP2P's tech platform ensures the country’s highest-quality borrowers get access to faster, cheaper capital.

InspeCity is building propulsion and in-space servicing to enable space cities in the future.

India's approach to unbundle payments made the world look up and take notice. Now it's time to disrupt commerce with the Open Network for Digital Commerce or ONDC. In our latest Theory of Next deep dive we mapped, researched, and reached out to every network participant live on ONDC right now. ‍ And we're excited to share with you a comprehensive what could be India's next unicorn catalyst with inputs from Vibhor Jain (COO of ONDC), Sujith Nair (Founding member of Beckn Protocol), and founders building on ONDC! Co-authored by Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler) and Gokul Kumaravelu.

“India has about 70 million unique women borrowers, which, to put it in context, is about a quarter of our households. Any ease of business here, any ease of credit here, any advancement here is our best shot at becoming a prosperous country.” —Neha Juneja, co-founder and CEO, IndiaP2P

A team from the Antler India Fellowship cohort, Cattle Guru is building a one-stop shop for Bharat farmers.

We are thrilled to back 16-year-old Tejas Ravishankar as he builds a robust productivity and experience platform for open-source developers.

OnArrival is building simple, plug and play APIs that enable travel sellers (e.g. OTAs, corporate travel managers, travel agents, Airlines, hotels, etc.) bundle high-margin travel ancillaries (e.g. visa, insurance etc) in over a billion trips worldwide.

Salad is building the future of how women take charge of their hormonal health.

In the second installment of our multi-part series we dive deeper into the different layers of AI value stack and how future founders can find their cutting edge in this rapidly evolving ecosystem. Note: This is part 2 of a multi-part AI series. If you are interested in understanding why AI will be an era-defining technology and the key terms associated with it, please read part 1 (click here) before you begin part 2.

Generative AI is opening up a world of opportunities and Hexo is building the underlying infrastructure to enable that. We are thrilled to partner with Vignesh Baskaran and Kunal Bhatia to help build and scale Hexo AI.

In this multi-part series, we explore everything from the origins and evolution of AI to the future AI landscape and how future founders can be a part of it. The 2nd installment of the series (click here) is also live for anyone interested in jumping right to how the AI landscape will pan out and what future founders need to know.

We are thrilled to lead the pre-seed round of Motif, a team formed at Antler India Residency as they transform the way SaaS is sold.

A country of over 1.4 billion people and something as crucial as the medical emergency response system still remains unsolved. The numbers quantify the magnitude and gravity of this problem - over 50% of the ambulances do not arrive even after 60 minutes, 90% of ambulances do not have the basic equipment and 97% have no trained personnel. But here is the most staggering number of them all - over 50% of all deaths in India are preventable. While ambulances are a part of the problem, they are not the solution. The missing piece in creating a robust medical emergency response system is a solid digital infrastructure layer.

A fitting pairing of Hitesh Bhuraria and Nishant Singh, one that was formed at the first-ever cohort of Antler India Residency, is set to build the future of how companies approach their decarbonization goals.

ApniBus, which has been operating in stealth mode, is now live in more than 350 routes connecting over 1000 destinations. In just 7 months, the platform has seen over 1 million transactions and is growing rapidly month on month. They have perfected an operating playbook that ensures superior unit economics from day 1 and at scale. We are proud to back Sumit, Ravi and the ApniBus team from day zero of their journey transforming intercity travel for the next 400M Bharat travelers.

We are thrilled to back 21-year-old award-winning game developers and designers, Harsh Savergaonkar and Aditya Kasibhatla, who, with Cricinshots aim to redefine gaming experiences for the next generation of gamers and cricket fans in India and beyond.

We at Antler are thrilled to back Finverv on day zero of its journey of building the critical infrastructure needed for enabling thousands of organizations to offer credit to their customers and suppliers while helping lenders build profitable and scalable partnerships.

India’s space tech industry is witnessing a paradigm shift driven by a factor common to most tech disruptions: a dramatic fall in cost. How will the confluence of multiple trends define the next era for space tech in India? Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler India) and Rahul Seth (Scouting Director, Antler India) tackle these questions in the latest episode of Theory of Next. In a special section, Awais Ahmed (Co-founder and CEO, Pixxel) joins the team to talk about Mars colonization, asteroid mining, and space factories.

At Antler India, we are particularly excited to back founders in areas such as SaaS, dev tooling, and Web3 infrastructure—with the vision of building critical infrastructure in India, for the world. To that end, we are thrilled to back Ronak, Debarshi, and the Adaptive team as they embark on a mission to empower technical and non-technical stakeholders at software companies globally.

It is always great to see more and more people willing to address mental health issues. Yet, as the conversation around mental health slowly expands, it also exposes the reality of crumbling support structures, lowered resilience levels, and the multiple failing points across our public and private healthcare systems. This is disheartening. The process of accepting that one needs help is difficult enough itself, the other steps needed in this journey should not add to the difficulty.

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.

The past two years in crypto have been absolutely astounding. From “DeFi summer” (now $250bn+ of total value locked) to “NFT craze” ($3.4bn monthly GMV on Opensea alone in August 2021) to Solana’s epic rise and various memecoin’s ultimate downfalls – the sheer pace of adoption and activity across the crypto ecosystem has been an incredible force. Every venture fund in the world is currently deepening or developing a crypto thesis. Talent from traditional industries is pouring into crypto. And we now have an overarching, epochal narrative to define the movement: web3. Amongst all the areas to focus on, I have chosen to write about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The reason for this is as follows: Incentive Innovation Rules All. Bitcoin provided a practical solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem by introducing an incentive innovation. In fact, much of crypto is about remixing existing technology with new incentives to create powerful new paradigms. DAOs are the natural frontier of incentive design in web3. Capital Power. The DeFi ecosystem, with $250bn total value locked (TVL), is the current “super-app” of web3. While only ~$10bn of DeFi TVL (~4%) is currently held in DAOs, this number will likely increase exponentially as more and more DeFi protocols progressively decentralize governance. More money, more power – DeFi Treasury DAOs have the potential for massively influencing web3 in 2022 and beyond as capital power grows. Web3 Promise. If the promise of web3 (versus web2) is to reduce centralized power in private, opaque corporate structures, then functional, community-led DAOs are a key prerequisite for the web3 promise to be fulfilled.

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.

Tune in to our Web3 Insights Call to learn about the new internet: Web3!

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualises the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis. In this episode, Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler India) and Vineet Agarwal (Investment Manager, Antler India) brainstorm and lay out our thesis on the electric vehicles landscape in India.

First appeared in The Economic Times. Head here for the story. The future of mobility is at a critical point of inflection. Every time oil prices spike or climate change is debated and discussed, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are inevitably mentioned as a part of the solution. Yet, despite several new Indian companies entering various parts of the EV value chain, significant capital infused in the space, and large-scale execution efforts, EVs are not mainstream yet. It is 2021 and it seems we have hit the inflection point for EVs to take off, finally.

Antler welcomes Nitin Sharma, who is joining as a Partner and co-lead for all India efforts. To help accelerate the tremendous innovation and value creation in the Indian tech ecosystem, Antler aims to invest over US$100M in India across funds in the next 4 years. These funds will support exceptional founders from the idea stage, all the way to Series A/B. Nitin will co-lead the India efforts with Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder.

This story is covered by Business Standard, Hindu Business Line, Economic Times, Business Insider, Business World, Outlook, Mint, YourStory, VC Circle and Tech in Asia. Antler announced plans to launch in India to enable more entrepreneurs to build startups through their platform, support and global reach. The local operation will start in Bangalore and be led by Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder, who is joining as Partner.