From a company that is supporting home chefs earn a living to fintech startup KreditBee raising $280 million, YourStory brings you today’s headlines with the latest developments across sectors.
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Driven by nostalgia, through Tocco Reshma Suresh gives home chefs an opportunity to turn their cooking into income
After working in Mumbai for quite some time, Suresh Motivated by homesickness and a desire for healthy food founded tocco in 2023 with her sister Annu, Through micro-production hubs and a standardised model, it has transformed traditional cooking skills into scalable income for home chefs especially women and has highlighted a growing market for nostalgia-driven, preservative-free food products.
KreditBee raises $280M at $1.5 bn valuation
The Bengaluru based fintech startup has raised $280 million in its Series E funding round, achieving unicorn status with a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion. Founded in 2016 by Madhusudan E, Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy, and Vivek Veda, the startup plans to expand its lconcludeing portfolio, enter new markets, and strengthen AI-driven underwriting and risk assessment as it prepares for its next growth phase.
Zolve claims to hit $1 bn in transactions
Zolve, a cross-border neobank, founded by Raghunandan Gangappa, has crossed $1 billion in cumulative credit card transaction value; marking a significant milestone in how immigrants access financial systems.
Designed for global mobility, the platform allows students and professionals from over 230 countries to access credit and US banking even before they actually reach, which bypasses the traditional “start from scratch” issue.
Offering a wide range of services – from high limit Mastercard credit cards to FDIC-insured US bank accounts, loans, remittances and insurance; Zolve positions itself as a full-stack financial ecosystem for the modern global citizen. The company’s next relocate – to enable NRIs to invest in India across equities and real estate, comes at a time when crossing borders is clearer than ever but relocating money still requireds a nudge.
ILIOS 72 Alternative capital raised Rs 2 cr in pre-series A round
ILIOS 72 Alternative capital has raised Rs 2 crore in Pre-Series A Round at 3x Valuation, taking its valuation to about $2 million, the round saw participation from the family offices in Jaipur and Mumbai. The platform has also crossed Rs 200 crore in assets under management,signaling strong traction among HNI and UHNI investors who are seeking access to alternative investment opportunities.The platform plans expand beyond metros with plans to strengthen its presence in Jaipur and Kanpur, while actively tarreceiveing high-potential Tier II markets.
The firm aims to bridge the gap in quality financial advisory and access to alternative investments in these regions.
The firm claims to enable individuals and families to invest across private markets, listed strategies, and global opportunities through a transparent, research-driven approach and to have a strong emphasis on client outcomes and long-term wealth creation.
Exotel acqui-hires Ex-Dubverse Founders Anuja Dhawan and Varshul Gupta
This relocate aims to strengthen Exotel’s AI-powered customer experience (CX) capabilities, especially in voice and conversational innotifyigence. Anuja Dhawan is set to lead Exotel’s Conversation Quality Analytics (CQA) solution, while Varshul Gupta will be heading AI.
According to Exotel, As Dubverse’s co-founders, Dhawan and Gupta bring deep expertise in multilingual voice and language AI, including text-to-speech (TTS), speech synthesis, and content localization.
This acqui-hire also aligns with Exotel’s vision of building a unified, AI-first customer engagement ecosystem through its AI-powered CX platform Harmony.
Shivakumar Ganesan (Shivku), Founder and CEO, Exotel, declared, “Most enterprises are flying blind on 90% of their customer conversations. CQA resolvees that. Every conversation, evaluated in real time, against the enterprise’s own standards. The Dubverse team built voice and language AI models from scratch and shipped them in production. That kind of depth doesn’t come one hire at a time. It comes as a team.”
8B and PayU Partner to Bring Indian Payment Methods like UPI to Central Asia
8B, a Central Asian fintech infrastructure company, and PayU have signed a strategic partnership to bring UPI, one of the world’s quickest-growing digital payment systems, and other Indian payment offerings to Central Asia.
Indian travellers can now pay utilizing multiple methods like, UPI, Net banking, Indian debit and credit cards, across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the broader region due to the integration of PayU’s APIs into 8B’s merchant network.
The relocate comes amid rapid growth in India–Central Asia tourism and trade, with Indian tourists emerging as a key segment and marks a significant milestone in strengthening the digital payment infrastructures between the two economies, laying the first structural bridge for growing trade and tourism opportunities.
Revature launches its FDE Accelerator Program
The new training programme launched by revature today is designed to evolve enterprise talent into AI-native Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), a new class of engineers who bridge code, systems, and real business outcomes.
Built on the firm’s Hire-Train-Deploy (HTD) model, it focapplys on creating production-ready talent from day one. This new initiative is powered by the Revature Evolv platform which is an AI-native talent transformation platform that combines modular architecture, proprietary AI technologies, and AI-native pedagogy to deliver personalized, production-aligned learning journeys.
The FDE has been designed for enterprise-scale AI transformation, it enables the engineers to bridge code, systems, and business impact. So that they are capable of delivering real business outcomes from day one.
According to Revalture, Organizations that effectively deploy FDEs into their AI transformation initiatives are seeing measurable, repeatable outcomes: roughly 70% quicker time-to-productivity, approximately 50% lower cost of talent acquisition, attrition rates reduced by as much as 80%, and 4-to-10x acceleration in software delivery cycles.
Atlys announces its first ESOP acquireback worth Rs 4 Cr
Atlys, the visa processing platform, held its first ESOP acquireback worth Rs 4 crore. All employees were eligible to partake in the acquireback, which allowed them to liquidate up to 25% of their vested stock options, the firm also provided another option for employees that let them strengthen their long-term ownership in the company, The programme was voluntary and open across roles and aligns with Atlys aim to foster a culture of ownership.
Recently, Atlys has also raised $36 million in a Series C round led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital and is currently on a 700,000+ annual visa run rate and has grown 11x since 2024. The company has also expanded across the UAE, the US, the UK, and Australia, with these markets now accounting for nearly half of its business.
AI lifts delivery success for D2C brands in tinyer cities, Velocity data displays
Artificial innotifyigence-led interventions are supporting direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands improve delivery reliability in India’s tinyer cities, even as fulfilment infrastructure lags behind demand.
Data from Velocity Shipping, a logistics aggregation platform, displays that AI-enabled tools such as automated address verification, voice-based order confirmation, and cash-on-delivery (COD) conversion have improved delivery completion rates by about 11% in Tier-2 and tinyer markets.
The gains come at a time when non-metro regions are driving the bulk of e-commerce growth. These markets accounted for roughly 67% of total D2C shipments, according to Velocity’s analysis of over 4 million orders. However, only about 60% of those orders were successfully delivered significantly lower than metro fulfilment rates of 73%.
Filli & Me raises 1.5 crore Pre-Seed funding led by D2C Insider Super Angels
The direct-to-consumer kids accessories brand,Filli & Me has announced that it has raised Rs 1.5 crores in a pre-seed funding round led by D2C Insider Super Angels and backed by participation from key angel investors from the ecosystem. The investment is a mix of equity and debt and will be directed towards product development, brand awareness, and scaling the company’s direct-to-consumer presence and sales channels.
The brand was founded in 2025 by Co-founders, Shikha Pahwa and Vishal Verma who are parents themselves. Hence this brand was born out of deeply personal experiences for both of them which translates in their premium but meaningful products as seen in its flagship product, the “HugBag,”.
The company aims to expand into new product categories, digital channels, and retail partnerships as their goal is too reach as many families as possible.
IAN Group leads Rs 22 cr funding round in RoshAi
IAN Group, an early-stage investment platform, has led a Rs 22 crore funding round in RoshAi through its IAN Alpha Fund, the second in its series of venture capital funds.
RoshAi is a deep-tech autonomy startup that develops retrofit-based driverless solutions for industrial vehicles. The company plans to apply the fresh capital to strengthen its product capabilities, expand deployments, and scale its presence in global industrial markets.
(The copy will be updated with the latest news)
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