Kae Updates Of The Quarter (Apr-Jun 2024)

Foreword (Changes in India's political landscape, AI becomes more capable, last quarter’s recap)

India wrapped up its massive General Elections in Jun 2024, which also happens to be the largest electoral exercise in the world. More than 968 Mn people out of a population of 1.4 Bn people were eligible to vote, out of which 642 Mn voters participated in the election. We look forward to seeing continued support for the startup ecosystem and emerging as an even more competitive market in the global context over the next few years.

To no one’s surprise, GenAI has once again dominated the news cycle. OpenAI’s recently announced GPT-4o is capable of interacting using text and vision, meaning it can view screenshots, photos, documents, or charts uploaded by users and have conversations about them. It will also have updated memory capabilities and will learn from previous conversations with users. Not just OpenAI, Runway AI also introduced its latest AI model Gen-3 Alpha, used for high-fidelity, controllable video generation, with some claiming that its initial results are even better than OpenAI’s model. Another big competitor, Claude AI, for code generation, has been in the news lately. Coupled with AI integration in Apple’s latest iOS, Google’s focus on AI on their Pixel phones and Samsung on their flagship S series, we can see how the next few years in consumer tech are going to focus on GenAI.

Indian startups raised nearly $7 billion in funding during the first half of 2024. This is more than the $5.92 billion raised in H1 2023. But it’s also far less than $20 billion in H1 2022. June was a particularly good month, and saw nearly $2 billion in funding which is more than double of the average of $1 billion monthly funding until May this year. Late-stage companies such as Zepto, Flipkart, PharmEasy and Lenskart were the top deals in H1 2024 with $665 million, $350 million, $216 million, and $200 million funding, respectively.

Portfolio Buzz In The Media

Addition

Eternz is a curated vertical marketplace for jewellery that provides a dedicated and unique jewellery-buying experience. They raised a $1.15 Mn seed round, led by us. Jewellery has become one of the strong pillars in the fashion industry. Eternz’s approach of having a curated vertical marketplace, offering customers a trusted and unique experience and brands a platform to sell to high-intent consumers is promising.

We're delighted to have led this pre-seed round and are excited to see the startup's growth, driven by Arthi!

Funding

Foxtale, a community-first skincare brand making affordable efficacious skincare suited to Indian women, raised $18 Mn (approx. INR 150 Cr) in its Series B round of funding, led by Panthera Growth Partners. We also participated in this round, along with Matrix Partners India. We were the earliest backers in Foxtale, having led the round in Aug 2021.

Beyond the $$

SuperAGI is a dev-first open-source autonomous AI agent framework, which enables developers to build, manage and run useful autonomous agents quickly and reliably. Their research paper on AUTONODE was accepted for IEEE’s 7th International Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval.

Beyond this, they have recently published two papers on Efficient GUI Understanding and GUI Data for Execution.

Wysa is an advanced conversational AI chatbot for mental health. It has been selected as a sub-awardee for a $3.4 Mn grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).?

Hippo Video empowers businesses to create impactful videos at scale, eliminating the need for lengthy recording sessions or complex editing through its AI-powered platform.

They recently introduced a text-to-video update, allowing users to transform words into interactive videos, featuring lifelike, full-length AI avatars

Square Yards, an integrated real estate platform, reported a revenue of INR 1000 Cr (USD 120 Mn) in FY24, a year-over-year growth of around 50% from INR 663 Cr in FY23. For the first time, the company also achieved EBITDA profitability for the full year FY24. Additionally, Square Yards reached operating cash flow breakeven in H2FY24.

Kae Updates

Blogs

We’ve recently kickstarted a new series called “AI-ming for the Stars”, where we will explore the transformative power of Generative AI (GenAI) and its profound impact on both consumer experiences and enterprise functions. We will examine both current applications and the exciting potential we foresee for the future.

• Part 1: An Introduction- In the first piece, Gaurav Chaturvedi covers broad trends in GenAI, the potential for further development, and the eventual impact on everyday processes. This sets the pace for the rest of the blogs in this series.
• Part 2a: The Next Revolution in Consumer Experiences in India- This piece by Natasha Malpani Oswal presents GenAI's impact through a consumer behaviour-centric framework.
• Part 2b: Consumer GenAI applications from India- What does it mean to build Consumer GenAI from India across uniquely domestic use cases? In this second piece, Natasha Malpani Oswal explores what consumer GenAI applications from India, both for India and for the world could look like.