Indranil Datta

Real-Time Cross-Border Payment Interoperability → Powered by AI + Tokenised Infrastructure Two months ago, I met a restaurant owner in Chandigarh who waited three full days for an overseas supplier payment to clear. By the time the funds arrived, the price of ingredients had already changed. His words stuck with me: "Global business moves in seconds. Payments still move like it’s 1998." That gap is closing fast. Today, AI-driven payment intelligence and tokenised financial infrastructure are quietly rewriting how money travels across borders. And the shift is bigger than most people realise. According to the BIS (2024), tokenised settlement rails can reduce cross-border transaction costs by up to 60%, while AI-based fraud and risk scoring cuts verification time from hours to milliseconds. When combined, they create something powerful: instant, interoperable global settlement networks. What used to require intermediaries, correspondent banks, and multiple currency hops is now being executed on shared, programmable ledgers—fully compliant and fully transparent. This isn’t theoretical anymore: Project mBridge (BIS + UAE + China + HK + Thailand) processed $22M+ in pilot real-time cross-border settlements using tokenised CBDCs. Ripple, JPM’s Onyx, and Visa B2B Connect are already enabling near-instant global transfers without traditional SWIFT delays. AI-powered compliance engines are reducing false positives in AML/KYC by up to 80%, according to a 2024 Gartner report. In my own work across procurement, SaaS, and supply-chain ecosystems, I see the same pattern again and again: The real bottleneck isn’t sourcing, logistics, or negotiations. It’s outdated payment infrastructure. Imagine a world where: ✔ A supplier in Vietnam receives payment from a café in Sydney instantly. ✔ Smart contracts auto-release funds the moment goods are scanned at a warehouse. ✔ Restaurant owners track every rupee or dollar in real time across markets. That’s not five years away. It’s unfolding right now. As global commerce scales, real-time interoperability won’t be a competitive advantage—it will be the baseline. The question isn’t “Will this happen?” It’s “Who will adapt early enough to benefit?” #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #Tokenisation #AI #RealTimeSettlement #SaaS #GlobalTrade #Innovation #DigitalEconomy

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🚀 Big News for India’s D2C & Retail Tech Ecosystem! ✅ Sanjay Netrabile ✅ Ashish Shah ✅ Ambarees Murty ➡️ Huge congratulations to Pepperfry on raising ~$18 Million (₹158 Cr+) in a fresh funding round led by Morde Foods Pvt. Ltd. and SageOne Investment Managers Investments, with strong support from @Newage Global Ventures, F3 Advisors and 50+ strategic backers including Shreyas Iyer — a major vote of confidence in the future of hybrid retail and experiential furniture commerce. 🔥 This comes as Pepperfry continues to reinforce its leadership in omnichannel furniture & home décor, blending a powerful online marketplace with over 200 Studio Pepperfry experience centres across 100+ cities — redefining how India buys, feels and lives with home furnishings. 💼 Under the leadership of @AshishShah (CEO) and the visionary founding legacy alongside the late Ambareesh Murty, Pepperfry has scaled over a decade to become one of India’s most loved furniture brands — serving millions of households and thousands of MSME partners nationwide. 📈 With this fresh capital infusion, Pepperfry is poised to: ✔️ Expand business operations & deepen omni-channel footprint. ✔️ Fuel working capital for growth and subsidiary scaling. ✔️ Strengthen logistics, supply chain and customer experience. ✔️ Innovate with tech-led retail solutions for consumers & partners alike. 🏡 Retail & D2C innovation isn’t slowing down — it’s evolving. And funding rounds like these show investors are backing experience-driven commerce with solid unit economics and strong brand heritage. 🔗 Read Full story here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gMR-F3BY #RetailTech #StartupFunding #Omnichannel #D2C #Furniture #ScaleUp #Pepperfry #AshishShah #Entrepreneurship #scoopearth #scoopearth.in #scoopearthmagazine

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🚁 Skye Air Mobility raised just $5mn to build a national #drone #logistics platform 🚁 Despite being a pioneer in #Indian air mobility — delivering #healthcare, #agriproduce, #retail, and #consumerproducts to far societies, remote and mountainous regions — Skye Air’s total funding is lower than the marketing budget of some well-funded #D2C startups. And yet, they’ve: -> Built an operational product -> Navigated India’s complex drone regulations -> Generating real revenues -> Solved real-world logistics in the most unforgiving geographies Meanwhile, we keep hearing political rhetoric about building #deeptech ecosystems and Atmanirbhar Bharat 🔍 But where is the investable ecosystem? 🔍 Where is the domestic #risk capital that supports bold engineering at scale? 🔍 Where are the #government-backed incentives, subsidies or revenue platforms for the #deeptech startups? India’s #deeptech founders are building against the tide — battling not just tech challenges but also a lack of funding, buyers, and market-making policies 💡 If we want to see India emerge as a deeptech hub, we need more than just mission statements and summits. We need markets, mandates, and meaningful money 👍Kudos to founders like Ankit Kumar and teams like Skye Air who continue to build anyway. 🎯 Hats off to institutional #deeptech investors like Chiratae Ventures for having the conviction to back such bold innovations early 📊 For context: Here's a comparative snapshot of Skye Air Mobility vs #global drone logistics companies — Zipline, Wing, Matternet, Kite Aero and Flytrex — across revenue, funding, use cases, and geography At o2 Angels Network, our current focus is backing deeptech startups that are building high-impact, differentiated technologies

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India’s Next Chapter of Capital Formation India stands at a point where policy, capital, and execution are finally converging. The decade ahead will belong to those who can organize this convergence — with discipline, structure, and scale. At Painite Ventures, our focus is clear: to design and deliver investment platforms that connect global capital with India’s most resilient real assets. We work across: 🏥 Healthcare – Institutional hospital ecosystems and health infrastructure 🏨 Hospitality – Experience-driven assets built for recurring yield 🌿 Green Energy – Renewable corridors integrated with industrial growth zones 🏭 Industrial Parks – Logistics and manufacturing clusters powering exports 🏡 Real Estate – Residential and commercial portfolios designed for stability 🤖 AI & Digital Infrastructure – Enabling the next layer of productivity 🏛️ PPP Projects – Aligning private expertise with public purpose Each vertical is treated not as a transaction but as a component of a unified capital architecture — designed for continuity, compliance, and compounding value. India no longer lacks opportunity. It requires structure — and that’s what we build. Painite Ventures Where global capital meets organized growth. #PainiteVentures #InstitutionalCapital #IndiaGrowth #AlternativeAssets #PrivateMarkets #GlobalInvestors #LongTermValue #Infrastructure

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A year ago, we met the founders of Octobotics Tech with a shared conviction: the world’s most critical industrial assets shouldn’t require humans to do the dirty, dull, and dangerous work manually—especially when automation can make it safer, faster, and more reliable. Fast-forward 12 months, and what’s stood out most isn’t just the tech—it’s the founder resilience. Building hard robotics in industrial environments is never linear. Real-world surfaces are corroded. Access is constrained. Data is messy. Customer expectations are uncompromising. Through constant iterations, field trials, and the “back-to-the-drawing-board” moments, the team kept executing with clarity and grit. Ishan Bhatnagar and Gulshan Kumar have built this with uncommon persistence—and it shows. What they’re building (and why it matters): Octobotics is reshaping the global Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) robotics landscape with vertically integrated, AI-enabled hardware platforms that automate high-risk inspections across Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Maritime, Rail Transportation, and Offshore Energy. This last year has been a masterclass in building what the market truly needs—and building it the hard way: with engineering depth, domain credibility, and relentless execution. BYT Capital is proud to back this journey—and even more excited for what’s ahead as Octobotics scales globally. Harshikaa Paliwal Vaishnavi Chandrasekar Karan Verma Dr. Dinesh Singh Aditya Arora #Robotics #DeepTech #NDT #IndustrialAI #OilAndGas #MaritimeTech #AssetIntegrity #VentureCapital #BYTCapital

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🚀 WeHouse - Home Construction, founded by Sripad Nandiraj & Rohan Vinayak Reddy, raises ₹25 Cr Series A from Anthill Ventures, Daggubati Suresh, Gaurav Marya & Mohnish Yerra ,powering India’s $373B prop-tech revolution. Prop-tech startups like WeHouse are transforming home construction in India, bringing technology, transparency, and efficiency to an industry long dominated by fragmented players. 👉 Read the full story on Innovent Blog #PropTech #IndianStartups #SeriesAFunding #ConstructionTech #StartupEcosystem #innovation

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DeepTech doesn’t move at the speed of hype, it moves at the speed of conviction. As we bring together our Investment Partners for the Delhi Roadshow, I’m encouraged to see growing alignment around long-horizon innovation across Defence, Health, and Climate. If we want to build enduring DeepTech companies from India, founders and capital must commit to the journey from validation to scale together. Looking forward to meaningful conversations on 14th March. Join us at https://lnkd.in/g7iiQ-Be in Delhi as we bring together founders, investors, corporates, researchers, and ecosystem leaders to shape the next wave of frontier innovation from India. ThinKuvate BlueGreen Ventures ZeCa Capital IAN Group growX ventures Amity Capital Ventures Indicorn Angels 247VC

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#MOBIKWIK: Zaakpay, CRUT & ONDC launch WhatsApp Bus Ticketing for Odisha 🚌 👉🏻 Zaakpay (MobiKwik’s arm) partners with CRUT & ONDC to digitize ~36 million annual bus rides 👉🏻 Chat-based ticketing via WhatsApp now live in 9 cities incl. Bhubaneswar, Puri, Cuttack & Rourkela 👉🏻 Supports ticket booking, payments (UPI, cards), grievances & more—all in Odia & English 👉🏻 Built by PeLocal; Zaakpay powers secure payments 👉🏻 A big leap in inclusive, cashless public mobility 🚍 #Mobikwik #Zaakpay #Odisha #CRUT #ONDC #DigitalPayments #PublicTransport #WhatsApp

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50 visits to the registrar's office over 30 years — in Mumbai. As a buyer. As a seller. And everything in between. Every visit follows the same script: The queue. The hustle. Agents pushing files forward. The actual signing and fingerprinting? Barely a minute. The wait? Never less than an hour — often two. To be fair, some things have improved. Rental and leave-and-license agreements can now be done from home. The agent comes to you. That’s real progress. But when it comes to buying or selling property, at least in Mumbai, the process still feels stuck in another era. You still need to physically show up. Stand in line. Navigate a system where completing the process without an experienced agent feels nearly impossible. I’ve seen many sectors transform through digitization over the decades. Banking. Payments. Tax filing. Company registrations. Yet property registration — one of the most important financial transactions in a person’s life — remains largely unchanged. Perhaps things are different in other cities — I genuinely don’t know. But in Mumbai, the infrastructure for change clearly exists. The demand is obvious. What we need now is the will to make it happen. A fully digital, end-to-end property transaction process — with verified e-signatures, secure biometric authentication from home, and transparent document tracking — shouldn’t be a luxury. It’s long overdue. Hopefully we see this change in my lifetime. Preferably before visit #51. #RealEstate #Digitization #PropTech #Mumbai #DigitalIndia #PublicServices

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The Product Mind Behind eChai San Francisco (Originally published for Slice of Startup Life on eChai Ventures) Over the years, eChai has grown from a small group of founders in Ahmedabad to a global network connecting entrepreneurs across cities and time zones. We have active chapters in India, growing ones in Dubai and Singapore, and a thriving community in the Bay Area. Each city carries its own setup, but what makes eChai special everywhere is the same: founders helping founders, without pretense. San Francisco wasn’t always one of our most active chapters. We had done a few meetups when someone from eChai was visiting from India, but the consistency wasn’t there yet. That changed when Khyati Brahmbhatt decided to take the lead. In February 2025, when Khyati was visiting India, I invited her to one of our eChai meetups in Ahmedabad. It was a typical founder evening, lively, curious, full of conversations that carried on late into the night. During that chat, she asked, “Let me know if you plan to do anything in San Francisco.” I said, “We already do, but not as frequently as in other cities.” She smiled and said, “I can help you with anything that you need.” That simple offer was the start of everything that followed. Living in the United States, Khyati understood the founder diaspora, people who had moved for opportunity but missed the sense of belonging that eChai represents. She started small. A few mixers. A dinner. A food-truck social. Then partnerships with Zoom HQ, San Jose State University, and Playground Studios. She also brought key restaurants like Rooh, Fitoor, and Ettan into the mix for founder dinners. Each gathering felt intentional. She treated every event like a product, observe what works, improve what doesn’t, and make sure people leave feeling connected. That steady approach transformed eChai San Francisco into what it is today: a familiar home for founders traveling from India and a local community for those building in the Bay Area. It carries the same openness as our Indian chapters, but adapted to a global context. And now, Khyati is extending that blueprint across North America. She builds communities the way great product and growth leaders build teams: with empathy, clarity, and the confidence that small iterations compound faster than grand gestures. You can see that thinking in everything she does, in how she listens to feedback after every event, how she notices what keeps founders coming back, and how she quietly improves the experience without making it look like a strategy. It’s about designing trust, one experience at a time, until people start to feel like they belong without being told they do. As Khyati now lays out her plans for eChai North America, I’m excited to see what’s next, for her, for the founders she connects, and for this journey we’ve started together. If the past eight months are any indication, the best chapters of this story are still to come.

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Bhiwandi, once seen as an impossible bet for development, is now charging ahead as one of India’s most promising growth frontiers. The city is rapidly reinventing itself — shifting from the country’s “godown capital” to a high-velocity logistics, industrial, and residential hub. With game-changing infrastructure like Metro Line 5, new bridge networks, booming e-commerce demand, and focused government push to build Asia’s largest logistics centre, Bhiwandi’s transformation is nothing short of dramatic. In this rising landscape, SUSBIO is set to play a meaningful role. Our advanced SUSBIO ECOTREAT will support an upcoming textile park in Bhiwandi, ensuring that every drop of wastewater generated is treated, recycled, and reused — creating a circular water ecosystem that strengthens sustainability within the park. SUSBIO ECOTREAT — powering the infrastructure of tomorrow in one of India’s fastest-evolving cities. #susbio #ecotreat #bhiwandi #warehousing #textilepark #logistichub #industrialpark #sewagetreatment #wastewater #greenbuilding

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Backing a manufacturing startup at seed isn't the obvious VC move. But Vivek, Rahul and Aditya, the co-founders of Bidso had lived the problem across Flipkart, Udaan, and ITC, and had a very clear idea of how to fix it. Two and a half years later, the thesis has played out stronger than we imagined. Excited to share that Bidso has raised Rs 63 cr in Series A round and happy to welcome Blume Ventures and Alteria Capital onto the cap table. Thrilled to have Sadev Ventures (Formerly Eternal Capital) continue to back the team at Bidso. Sajith - genuinely looking forward to partnering with you and the Blume team. You think about long-term company building the way we do, and Bidso is exactly the kind of company that benefits from that alignment. We remain excited to continue backing Bidso as it progresses on its way to being a truly generational force that defines what "Make in India" actually means. Onwards!!!!! PeerCapital Karthik Prabhakar Rohit M A

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Pleased to announce that Karekeba Ventures, among others, has invested in Stylework SaaS-based co-working/managed workspace aggregator Stylework on Wednesday announced the closure of Rs 30-crore Pre-Series B funding, which is planned to be deployed towards technology enhancement, domestic and international market expansion, and hiring key leadership personnel. Of the total funding, the company had achieved the first close of Rs 10-crore led by Equentis Angel Fund last month, with participation from Karekeba ventures /Cogniphy AIF Fund alongside continued subscriptions from Lets Venture Fund, MoneyVyapaar, HNIs and other strategic investors, Stylework said. Karekeba Ventures Kshitiz Anand Vishal Nikumbh

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The first quarter of 2025 has revealed fascinating trends in India's private markets. After analyzing the latest data, I wanted to share some key observations that might interest founders, investors, and ecosystem players. 1. Sectoral Shifts Worth Noting • Technology maintained its lead, with software and IT services attracting the lion's share of investments • Consumer brands surprised many by securing several large rounds, signaling renewed confidence in the sector • Healthcare investments crossed the $1 billion mark, reflecting the sector's growing maturity 2. Evolving Investment Patterns Early-stage deals continue to dominate by volume, while growth-stage investments account for most of the capital deployed. What's particularly interesting: • The average venture round size held steady compared to previous quarters • Angel investor activity increased year-over-year, with some notable participation in larger rounds 3. Emerging Opportunities Beyond the usual sectors, two areas show particular promise: • Climate and energy transition technologies are seeing serious institutional interest • B2B solutions addressing operational efficiencies are gaining traction A Thought to Ponder While established sectors attract most attention, some of the most interesting opportunities might lie where traditional industries meet innovative solutions. The companies that can bridge this gap often create outsized value. I'd love to hear from others in my network: • What trends are you seeing in your space? • Any sectors or business models you find particularly compelling right now? #Investing #VentureCapital #StartupIndia #PrivateMarkets

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Eggoz Raises $20 Mn Series C Led By Gaja Capital; Claims to hit its EBITDA Breakeven In Q4 FY25, Revenue Up 76% YoY To INR 130 Cr FY25 https://lnkd.in/gd9j68rp Abhishek Negi Aditya Singh #Eggoz #funding #D2Cbrands #Agritech #EBITDAbreakeven #Revenuegrowth #Indianstartups #consumerbrands #GajaCapital

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The #JANAI movement begins in Deogarh! With over 500 youth already trained on AI here, at Head Held High Foundation, our commitment is to; 1. Equip another 1000+ youth with AI skills 2. Run a student hackathon to orient them to solve local challenges using AI and incubate 10 AI ideas 3. Bring the DPI stack of ONEST, @ONETAC and AI to create additional opportunities and generate incomes for the tourism and hospitality businesses We look forward to working with the support of STPI - Software Technology Parks of India , IndiaAI Mission and other partners! Nishikant Dubey Abhishek Singh Arvind Kumar

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