Startup news and updates: daily roundup (February 20, 2026)

From General Catalyst's $5 billion plan for India to Atlassian's India engagement strategy, YourStory brings you today’s headlines with the latest developments across sectors.

Featured stories

How India is powering the growth of Atlassian worldwide

Australia-headquartered collaboration software company Atlassian has rapidly scaled its operations in India, which has become a hub for IT service management and product development.

“The younger demographic in India is eager to learn new things and wants to explore different areas. They are always keen to take up new technologies and platforms,” Shamik Sharma, Head of Product - IT Service Management (ITSM), Atlassian India, said in an interview to EnterpriseStory.

The expanding talent pool in the country has expertise in the mobile-first approach, design thinking, software engineering, and product development, making them an attractive proposition to Atlassian. The Australia-headquartered company established its India centre in 2018 in Bengaluru. The centre has grown rapidly over the years to over 2,500 employees and is one of Atlassian’s largest R&D hubs outside Australia and the United States. Read more.

Latest news

General Catalyst to invest $5B in India over the next five years

Venture capital firm General Catalyst will invest $5 billion in India over the next five years, marking one of the largest VC commitments made to the country. The announcement was made during the global CEO roundtable at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

General Catalyst, which has backed firms like software company Canva, quick-commerce firm Zepto, and AI company Anthropic, is optimistic about innovations in India. "India's current generation of innovators is solving for billion-person complexity that can reshape global markets—something no other ecosystem can replicate," said CEO Hemant Taneja, CEO, General Catalyst, in a LinkedIn post. Read more.

Funding News

Fintech startup Roopya raises Rs 4 Cr in seed round

Fintech SaaS startup Roopya raised Rs 4 crore in a seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures to expand its lending infrastructure and embedded finance operations.

Operating out of Kolkata and Gurugram, Roopya provides a fully automated loan origination system and a lending-as-a-service platform. The technology enables financial institutions, including non-banking financial companies, to digitise the entire lending process and launch customised products, such as buy-now-pay-later and equated monthly instalment options, within four to six days.

Founded by Raman Vig and Sudipta Kumar Ghosh, the platform works with over 20 lenders processing more than 30,000 loans monthly, facilitating Rs 200 crore in processed loans annually across 10 states.

Other news

PharmEasy partners with Samsung Health to integrate healthcare services into app

Indian healthcare platform PharmEasy partnered with Samsung Health to allow users to order medicines, book lab tests, and arrange online consultations directly through the Samsung app's newly launched 'Find Care' feature.

The integration enables users to access essential medical services without switching applications, combining these new capabilities with Samsung Health's existing tracking tools for physical activity, sleep patterns, and heart health.

As part of the collaboration, Samsung Health users will receive six months of complimentary PharmEasy Plus membership, which provides free delivery, extra credits, and additional savings on healthcare products and diagnostic services.

HCLTech launches upgraded industrial AI edge platform VisionX 2.0 with NVIDIA

Global technology company HCLTech launched VisionX 2.0, an upgraded multi-modal artificial intelligence edge platform.

The platform integrates NVIDIA's physical AI computing stack, including its vision language models and video search capabilities. The system processes data locally through NVIDIA GPUs and Dell NativeEdge deployments, which helps eliminate bandwidth bottlenecks and protects data privacy during sensitive operations.

Purpose-built for industrial use, VisionX 2.0 analyses multiple data streams such as video, audio, LiDAR, and IoT telemetry to detect anomalies, risks, and safety violations. The platform also features a zero-trust security architecture and is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing video management systems and sensors.

UAE to deploy 8 exaflop supercomputer in India to strengthen local sovereign AI infrastructure

Abu Dhabi will establish a national-scale AI supercomputer in India, with 8 exaflops of compute capacity to expand the country's domestic infrastructure for advanced AI development.

The system will be delivered by UAE-based technology group G42 and AI chipmaker Cerebras, in partnership with the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Announced at the AI Impact Summit 2026, the supercomputer will operate under local governance frameworks to ensure all data remains within national jurisdiction. The project is designed to meet sovereign security requirements and will serve as a foundational asset under the India AI Mission.

Once operational, the supercomputer will be accessible to educational institutions, startups, and government ministries. The democratised access model aims to lower barriers to AI innovation tailored for India's 1.4 billion citizens, accelerating breakthroughs in critical sectors, like healthcare, agriculture, and education.

Tech Mahindra, NVIDIA launch Hindi-first education AI model

Tech Mahindra partnered with NVIDIA to launch a Hindi-first education large language model (LLM) under its Project Indus initiative to democratise high-quality learning across India.

Upgraded to an 8-billion-parameter architecture, the new model utilises NVIDIA's NeMo framework and NIM microservices for deployment. To overcome data scarcity in regional languages, developers generated half a billion synthetic tokens using NVIDIA's NeMo Data Designer.

The AI tool is designed to provide students with a foundational understanding of subjects such as physics. It also supports the creation of autonomous AI agents capable of operating fluently in natural Hindi to facilitate localised, AI-driven learning experiences.

Moving forward, Tech Mahindra plans to integrate advancements from the NVIDIA Nemotron ecosystem to reduce training cycles.

Fintech platform SaveIN enters home decor market via Royaloak Furniture partnership

Indian fintech platform SaveIN expanded its checkout finance services into the premium home and lifestyle sector through a partnership with Royaloak Furniture.

The collaboration enables customers at Royaloak's retail stores to finance furniture purchases of up to Rs 10 lakh. The financing is processed entirely in-store through a paperless, 30-second digital approval system for equated monthly instalments.

Moving beyond its initial focus on healthcare and wellness financing across 7,000 partner locations, SaveIN is targeting the $20 billion-plus Indian furniture and home decor market. The Y-Combinator-backed company utilises a financing model that integrates a pre-approved base of 5 crore bank customers, non-banking financial companies, and credit cards to facilitate high-value lifestyle transactions.

(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)