SUMMARY
Since 2014, Indian startups have raised a total of $164 Bn+ in funding, generated 1.6 Mn+ direct jobs, and attracted more than 9,500 active investors
In H1 2025 alone, startups in India raised over $5.7 Bn, up 8% YoY. While the uptick may appear modest, it’s a healthy rebound, especially after the prolonged funding winter
The 60th edition of Inc42’s 30 Startups To Watch Series features a curated mix of promising ventures spanning AI, EVs, biotechnology, gaming, and spiritual tech.
The Indian startup ecosystem isn’t just surviving global turbulence — it’s thriving with renewed momentum. Despite persistent market volatility and cautious investors, the first half of 2025 has painted a surprisingly vibrant picture.
Third-largest startup ecosystem, India is now home to more than 70,000 tech startups, collectively valued at over $650 Bn, and this engine shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Since 2014, Indian startups have raised a total of $164 Bn+ in funding, generated 1.6 Mn+ direct jobs, and attracted more than 9,500 active investors. Symbolic of this growth are the 124 unicorns that have emerged, alongside 42 listed new-age tech companies.
In H1 2025 alone, startups in India raised over $5.7 Bn, registering an 8% YoY growth. While the uptick may appear modest, it’s a healthy rebound, especially after the prolonged funding winter.
This performance signals a more strategic investment climate, where founders with clear revenue paths and strong fundamentals are gaining the most traction.
One sector, in particular, has shot into the spotlight — defence tech. In the wake of the recent India-Pakistan conflict and growing national security imperatives, the sector is finally commanding the attention it deserves. Homegrown defence startups are stepping up to deliver critical innovation for India’s strategic needs.
Against this backdrop, Inc42 returns with the 60th edition of its flagship series — 30 Startups To Watch.
This edition features a curated mix of promising ventures from across the innovation spectrum — spanning AI, defence, mobility, biotechnology, gaming and quick commerce — along with heavyweights in ecommerce, fintech, and healthtech that continue to drive India’s startup momentum.
So, without further ado, here are 30 promising Indian startups that caught our attention in June 2025.
Editor’s Note | The list below is not a ranking of any kind. We have listed the startups alphabetically.
Ammunic Systems | Fuelling India’s Defence Self-Reliance
India’s defence sector has long relied on foreign imports for advanced weapon systems. However, growing geopolitical uncertainties and complex global macroeconomic conditions have highlighted the need for technological sovereignty and national self-reliance in defence manufacturing.
To address this, ex-DRDO intern Priyanka Singhal launched Ammunic Systems in 2024. The Bengaluru-based startup focusses on designing and developing advanced weapon systems tailored to the needs of Indian defence forces, contributing to India’s push for indigenous innovation.
The core competence of the Bengaluru-based startup lies in electronic fuzes, warheads, and munition integration across land, air, and naval platforms.
The startup’s portfolio comprises smart firing systems for land operations, gravity drop munitions for aerial warfare, and underwater electronic fuzes for naval applications — all built with a focus on precision, safety, and compatibility with Indian defence standards.
In the country’s $18.4 Bn defence tech market, the one-year-old startup, Ammunic, counts the Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force, and DRDO, among others, as its clients.
With India ramping up its “Make in India” and “Atmanirbhar Bharat” defence initiatives, the homegrown defence tech startup is set to get a boost like no other.
Allo Health | Breaking The Silence On Sexual Health
In India, sexual health is often surrounded by stigma, misinformation, and silence. This discourages people from seeking timely treatment for several issues related to sexual health, which, in turn, leads to poor health outcomes and mental stress.
To bridge this gap, Ola’s founding partner Pranay Jivrajka started Allo Health, a sexual wellness platform that offers confidential, personalised care. The company offers AI-powered treatment protocols to over 35 physical clinics across cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Mysuru.
Allo Health provides end-to-end support for sexual health concerns, starting from assessment and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care. The startup helps patients with diseases like herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and hepatitis C, along with treating cases of erectile dysfunction.
In India’s sexual wellness market, projected to grow from $1.4 Bn in 2024 to $2 Bn by 2030, Allo Health claims to offer evidence-based care with empathy and privacy at its core.
Along with consultations, medications, diagnostics, and therapy, the startup also trains healthcare professionals through certification programmes and workshops. It competes with the likes of CupidCare, Vvox, Kama Clinics, and Veera Health.
Arctan AI | Bridging Global Communication Gaps
Global customer-facing teams often struggle with communication gaps caused by diverse accents, tonal differences, and background noise. These barriers can negatively impact rapport, business outcomes, especially in sales and support roles.
Bengaluru-based Arctan AI addresses this challenge with its AI stack, eliminating communication friction in real time.
Founded in 2023 by ex-Udaan engineer Aditya Singh Rathore, the startup helps people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds communicate more clearly and effectively.
Arctan’s real-time speech models adjust accents, tone, and inflexion with ultra-low latency. For example, someone speaking English in an Indian accent can sound more familiar to a US listener by acquiring an American accent during the conversation. The platform also removes filler words and enhances speech clarity, seamlessly integrating with most existing dialers and calling tools.
As businesses continue to globalise, the need for smooth, cross-cultural communication is more critical than ever.
With the rising adoption of AI in enterprise tools and customer engagement, Arctan is focussed on becoming a go-to solution for sales, support, and remote communication teams worldwide. Besides, the startup will look at realising gains from the rapid growth of the global enterprise AI market, which is projected to breach $155 Bn by 2030.
Armory | Shielding Indian Skies
The recent India-Pakistan conflict revealed how intrusions by unmanned aerial vehicles pose a serious threat to national security. While many of these threats were neutralised, the incident brings to the fore the urgent need for advanced defence systems capable of detecting and disabling rogue drones.
Recognising this need, Amardeep Singh, a founding member of listed drone tech firm ideaForge, launched a startup focussed on building counter-UAV defence systems.
After his tenure at ideaForge and two startup attempts, Singh returned to the defence tech space with Armory, a ground-based system designed to detect, deny, and destroy unauthorised aerial threats.
Armory is powered by Samaritan OS, the startup’s proprietary AI-first operating system. It enables real-time adaptability and continuous learning, which are vital for keeping pace with fast-evolving drone technologies.
Operating in India’s anti-drone system market, projected to grow at a staggering CAGR of 33.5% by 2031, the startup is building a self-reliant and responsive solution for India’s defence ecosystem.
Aurassure | Mapping India’s Climate Risk
As debates over climate change and global warming intensify, there’s a growing need for accurate, hyperlocal, and real-time environmental monitoring — especially in India, where declining air quality threatens both public health and economic stability.
However, current environmental impact tools often fall short in terms of granularity, accuracy, and actionability.
Founded by Akanksha Priyadarshini and Vamsi Krishna, Aurassure fixes this with its AI- and IoT-powered environmental monitoring solutions through a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) model.
The startup develops sensor-based monitoring, analysis, reporting, and tracking (SMART) devices to collect and analyse real-time data across parameters like air quality, weather, and floods.
Aurassure’s sensors track 25 environmental parameters and generate 4.8 Bn actionable data points through advanced analytics and customisable reports. This enables better decision-making for governments, industries, and large institutions.
The startup deploys its smart environmental sensors in strategic, hyperlocal locations — urban neighbourhoods, industrial zones, construction sites, flood-prone areas, and near sensitive public infrastructure (like airports or hospitals).
Besides, its AI/ML models fuse sensor data with satellite imagery, weather models (WRF), GIS layers, and historical trends to detect anomalies, make predictions, and simulate scenarios.
This enables Aurassure to predict short-range and long-range forecasts, enable urban heat island mapping, and provide flood risk alerts, among other environmental alerts. The startup claims that its products have seen use in cities like Kolkata and Chennai during monsoons. Besides, it became Google’s largest Indian partner for its Air View+ program and is now looking to expand in Brazil.
With global expansion on the cards, Aurassure will be eyeing a piece of the global climate tech market, which is experiencing rapid growth at the moment. The market is expected to expand to $218.3 Bn by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 22.87%.
Bullet | Bringing Soap Operas To The Scroll Generation
India’s media and entertainment landscape is undergoing a major shift. With younger audiences glued to their smartphones, long-form, periodic TV content has seen a sharp decline in appeal.
The traditional family viewing format has faded, giving way to snappier, mobile-first entertainment. Yet, the emotional pull of TV soap operas hasn’t disappeared — it’s just waiting for the right format.
Bullet, a microdrama platform launched in June 2025 by TV industry veterans Azim Lalani (ex-Network18 COO) and Saurabh Kushwah (ex-product head, ABP Network), is bringing soaps back by reimagining them for the digital age.
The platform delivers fast-paced, vertical-format episodic stories under 2 minutes that blend the drama of TV serials with the addictive pace of short-form video.
Bullet enables creators to build high-emotion, soap-style stories in a short-form, mobile-friendly format. It has already partnered with Zee Entertainment (now ‘Z’), and its shows will soon stream on Zee’s OTT platform Z5.
On the monetisation front, the startup is currently developing proprietary dynamic pricing models and AI-based viewer behaviour models. As of now, it has introduced ‘BulletCoins’, a gamified virtual currency to unlock content.
India’s short-form video market already engages 250 Mn monthly users and is projected to reach $8–12 Bn by 2030. In this high-octane market, Bullet locks horns with players like Reelies, ReelSaga, and Kuku TV.
Cleevo | Home Cleaning Reimagined
Often used for cleaning widely across India due to their perceived affordability, potent acids and pungent phenyls pose many problems, including health risks, limited efficacy, and heavy environmental cost.
When college friends Mayank Jain and Karan Shah went out to look for alternatives, the duo soon realised that most liquid cleaners, even premium ones, were almost 90% just water. Believing it was unfair for Indian consumers to pay a premium to ship and store water, the two founded Cleevo in 2022 to reimagine home cleaning.
The D2C brand sells a range of powder-to-liquid concentrates for floor, dish, and toilet cleaning, claiming to offer premium performance at half the price, without harsh chemicals. By mixing this powder with water, users can generate their own floor cleaner, dish, and kitchen cleaners in minutes.
Cleevo claims that its powder-to-liquid concentrates are non-toxic, cost-effective, and refillable. The startup manufactures its powders in-house and sells them via its website and marketplaces.
The D2C brand claims that its in-house research and development and manufacturing help it register better margins and ensure tighter quality control. It claims to have hit a revenue run rate of INR 4 Cr in FY24.
Darwix AI | Automating Enterprise Conversations
Enterprises — especially in sales and customer service — often face fragmented, inefficient communication across voice, chat, email, and offline channels.
While automation has improved digital interactions, real-time, offline conversations remain largely manual and unoptimised, creating gaps in customer experience and operational efficiency.
To bridge this gap, IIM alumnus Ajay Pal Sethi, along with Hanit Awal and Kushal Kumar Das, founded Darwix AI in 2022The startup offers an omnichannel conversational AI platform, Transform+, which helps enterprises analyse, assist, and automate real-time conversations across both online and offline customer touchpoints.
Darwix AI’s platform runs on a secure, multi-tenant LLM infrastructure and supports voice, chat, email, and even in-person conversations.
Its combination of real-time conversational intelligence, agent assistance, and workflow automation, along with the option to build personalised enterprise LLMs, makes it a robust solution for large-scale deployments.
In India’s enterprise AI market, projected to breach the $28.36 Bn mark by 2030, Darwix AI locks horns with Knowbl and Mindtickle.
Defendron Technologies | Crafting Lightweight Payloads For Defence Drones
Modern warfare is changing fast, with armies using more drones and unmanned systems. These drones need light, smart, and reliable tools (called payloads) to do tasks like spotting targets and tracking movement. But many existing payloads are either too heavy or not advanced enough for today’s needs.
Defendron Technologies, started in 2024 by BITS-Pilani graduate Omkar Ashok Lad, is building advanced payloads for small drones. Based in Pune, the startup designs and makes electro-optic stabilised systems that help drones see clearly and track targets during missions.
Defendron’s payloads are light, starting at just 280g, but still packed with features like dual EO-IR cameras, 30x zoom, thermal imaging, and optional laser range finders. The startup also builds custom test rigs to check the performance and reliability of defence systems used in aircraft, vehicles, and weapons.
The global market for drone payloads is expected to grow to $22.95 Bn by 2032. The Imaging and mapping segment, a key part of the drone payloads ecosystem, is set to grow from $2.6 Bn in 2024 to $7.2 Bn by 2029.
Defendron aims to tap into this fast-growing space with its lightweight, high-tech solutions for the future of defence.
DocRack AI | AI Desktop Assistant For Smarter File Management
In document-heavy industries like finance, law and consulting, professionals often deal with chaotic, manually managed file systems. This leads to wasted time, reduced accuracy and inefficiencies in daily workflows, especially as teams grow and files pile up.
To fix this, IIT-Bombay students Yogesh Kumar, Tejash Chauhan and Kedar Sharma launched DocRack AI in early 2025. The desktop platform acts as an AI-powered FileOps system that streamlines document organisation, classification, and automation directly from the user’s local setup.
DocRack AI emerged from a winning prototype built at Techfest IIT Bombay’s 2025 Hackathon.
Today, the platform offers AI-based file classification, local document processing and agentic workflow automation, helping teams stay organised and collaborative without cloud dependencies.
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