23 Startups Shaping the Future of AI, Fintech & Consumer Innovation
MUMBAI, India and SINGAPORE, Sept. 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Peak XV today announces the launch of Surge 11, bringing together 23 pioneering companies that are reimagining the future for consumers, developers, and enterprises across India, APAC, and global markets.
Surge’s eleventh cohort includes 12 AI startups building across vertical, enterprise, and consumer AI. Alongside them are 4 fintech innovators, 4 consumer brands, and 3 infrastructure and dev tools companies.
Since its inception in 2019, Surge has become one of the most impactful early-stage platforms globally. Surge companies have raised over $3 billion in follow-on funding, with the top ten startups generating more than $1 billion in cumulative annual revenues.
The Surge community has now grown to 170+ startups and 400+ founders, spanning 17+ nationalities and 18+ sectors. Surge combines seed capital with unmatched global access, bringing hands-on guidance from Peak XV’s investment and operating teams alongside structured programming focused on product, engineering, sales, marketing, culture, fundraising and other key foundational elements of building enduring companies.
“At Surge, we believe the seed stage is where the magic begins, and Surge 11 reflects the extraordinary entrepreneurial energy across our region. AI is leading the charge, not just in enterprise applications but by beginning to transform traditional industries from banking and healthcare, to semiconductors and manufacturing. We are also seeing the emergence of new consumer AI companies which is incredibly exciting. But AI is not the full story - we are now seeing the next wave of fintech companies and exciting new consumer companies in India and our region. This cohort truly offers a glimpse of the future,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV and Surge.
One element of Surge is the founder immersion where founders learn directly from some of the most influential builders across our region and globally. Some of our speakers and mentors in previous cohorts include Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Info Edge; Harshil Mathur of Razorpay; Vidit Aatrey of Meesho; Amrish Rau of Pinelabs; Kunal Shah of CRED, Gokul Rajaram; Arvind Jain of Glean, and Aman Sanger of Cursor.
The founder immersion for Surge 11 culminates in the US where founders engage directly with global leaders in technology. Previous immersions have included Sam Altman at Open AI HQ, Jensen Huang at NVIDIA HQ, and operators including Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, and Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake.
Past Surge founders also lead sessions for current founders, including Prukalpa Sankar of Atlan; Sagar Khatri of Multiplier; Bahadir Ozdemir of Airalo; Dhvanil Sheth of Skillmatics; Mohit Yadav of Minimalist; Sanket Shah of InVideo and Asad Khan of LambdaTest.
Surge also continues to bring in world-class investors to guide founders on scaling and fundraising, including Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, and Chetan Puttagunta of Benchmark.
About Surge
Surge is Peak XV Partners’ rapid-scale-up program for early-stage founders. The program combines up to USD 3 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, community access, and a global curriculum delivered by world-class operators. Surge’s mission is to help founders lay the foundation for enduring companies from day one. For more information, visit https://surge.peakxv.com/.
About Peak XV
Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) is a leading venture capital firm investing across India, Southeast Asia and beyond. Over the last 19 years of operations in the region, Peak XV has grown to manage approximately USD 9 billion in capital across 13 funds and invested in over 400 companies. The portfolio has seen 31 IPOs and several successful M&As till date. To know more, please visit: www.peakxv.com.
For more information or to speak to a Peak XV spokesperson, please contact:
| Lara Kanga Peak XV AVP Communications e. lara@peakxv.com |
Melissa Sim We. Corporate Advisors t. +65 9380 2938 e. msim@wecommunications.com |
Appendix
Surge 11:
| Company | Founders | Description | |
| 1 | AIR Trading | Grant Brits, Tim Blundy | AIR Trading is building an AI-powered data and trading system that ingests, analyses, learns, adapts, and executes trading strategies across global markets. |
| 2 | Aretto | Satyajit Mittal | Aretto is reinventing footwear with patented, growth-adaptive shoes that expand with a child’s feet for lasting comfort and healthy development. |
| 3 | Cybrilla | Anchal Jajodia, Satish Perala | Cybrilla is redefining the infrastructure of wealth management in India. |
| 4 | Finster | Siddhant Jayakumar | Finster is building an AI platform for equity research, focused on asset management and investment banking industries. The company was founded by Siddhant Jayakumar, who previously was a research engineer at Google DeepMind. |
| 5 | Ignosis | Chintan Sheth, Nirav Prajapati |
Ignosis powers banking, finance, and insurance with AI-driven financial insights, making credit faster, smarter, and more accessible |
| 6 | JustAI | Jeff Hara, Neha Mittal | JustAI is on a mission to hyper-personalize lifecycle marketing with always-on AI agents that deliver 1:1 personalization at scale. |
| 7 | Neude Skin | Aayshya Jhunjhunwala, Advay Jhunjhunwala | Neude Skin is ushering in a milk renaissance in skincare, with efficacy-first formulations designed using the science of milk. |
| 8 | NEAU | CoCo, Hanson | NEAU is a premium active and outdoor lifestyle brand that merges advanced textile innovation and proprietary fabric technology with contemporary design. |
| 9 | Nirmata | Damien Toledo, Jim Bugwadia, Ritesh Patel | Nirmata provides an AI Platform Engineer that helps teams overcome complex DevSecOps challenges with policy as code. |
| 10 | OnFinance | Anuj Srivastava, Priyesh Srivastava | OnFinance leverages NeoGPT-powered AI agents to make regulatory compliance effortless, simplifying, streamlining, and strengthening processes tailor-made for the BFSI sector. |
| 11 | Palo | Harry Jones, Jay Neo, Shivam Pankaj Kumar | Palo equips short-form content creators with personal AI-driven workflows that streamline creation, tracking, and iteration—powering new and powerful ways to amplify creativity with LLMs. |
| 12 | Pre6 | Amod Malviya, Rishi Kedia | Pre6 aims to bring the power of modern AI to manufacturing shopfloors across the world. |
| 13 | Qbeast | Srikanth Satya | Qbeast is an optimization engine that works cooperatively with any Lakehouse platform (Databricks, Starburst, Snowflake, Dremio, and others) to deliver fast, flexible, and cost-efficient queries through smarter data layout by using patented, multidimensional indexing. |
| 14 | Round1 | Jainam Talsania, Saumil Tripathi, Shreeyash Dharmadhikari | Round1 is building a jobs platform for India leveraging AI interviews to enrich candidate profiles, leading to faster and more suitable matches. |
| 15 | SixSense | Akanksha Jagwani, Avni Agarwal | SixSense converts complex semiconductor manufacturing data into real-time predictive insights, helping factories detect issues early and maximize yield, quality and productivity. |
| 16 | Ten X You | Karan Arora, Karthik Gurumurthy, Sachin Tendulkar | TEN x YOU exists to bring back play. Not as a distraction from work, but as the simplest way to show up better at work, at home, and in life. |
| 17 | Thanks | Cayley Ostrin, Doron Ostrin, Steven Tesoriero | Thanks helps brands drive revenue and loyalty with tailored ad experiences and customer rewards. |
| 18 | Tonbo.io | Cream Tang, Tzu Gwo |
Tonbo is a serverless database solution built on open formats, designed for the next wave of builders - startups, independent developers, and agent-driven teams. |
| 19 | Vault Wealth | Bilal Abou-Diab, Sami Abdul Hadi | Vault Wealth is redefining wealth management in the Middle East by offering transparent, institutional-grade investment advisory services through its digital platform. |
| 20 | Supanote | Samyukktha Thirumeni | Founded by Samyukktha T, Supanote AI is automating admin operations for behavioral health clinics in the US. |
| 21 | Stealth | AI company in stealth | |
| 22 | Stealth | AI company in stealth | |
| 23 | Stealth | AI company in stealth |
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f57678e9-2895-47d3-b3a2-2d146302c230