A platform for home chefs; Agritech’s post-boom correction
Tocco helps home chefs, especially women, turn their cooking into income. Meanwhile, in the world of agritech there's a structural correction in how investors understand the segment.
Hello,
Anthropic has come out with an advanced AI model, but it isn’t ready to share it with the world yet.
The model is too potent for a public release, says the company.
Anthropic has decided to keep Claude Mythos Preview away from prying eyes to prevent misuse. For now, the model is accessible only to select industry partners. Meanwhile, the company will use the findings from the preview to finetune its future releases and build the necessary safeguards.
In other news, Bengaluru-based fintech startup KreditBee has raised $280 million in a Series E funding round, achieving unicorn status with a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion. KreditBee will use the funds to grow its lending portfolio, enter new markets, and boost AI capabilities.
Meanwhile, venture debt funding for Indian startups grew 12% in 2025, reaching $1.38 billion across 187 deals, compared to $1.23 billion from 238 transactions in 2024.
Elsewhere, rising anxiety, sleep problems, and the addictive nature of online platforms have prompted Greece to ban social media access for children under the age of 15 from January 1, 2027.
Last year, Australia became the first country to block social media for children under 16. Slovenia, Britain, Austria and Spain are also working on similar moves.
ICYMI: After a successful lunar flyby, NASA’s Artermis II crew captured an incredible picture of our Milky Way galaxy. Check out the sky full of stars.
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- A platform for home chefs
- Agritech’s post-boom correction
Here’s your trivia for today: Which company’s initial product was a check-in app called ‘Burbn’?
Entrepreneurship
A platform for home chefs
Reshma Suresh’s Tocco helps home chefs, especially women, turn their cooking into income. With micro-production hubs and a standardised model, the platform is scaling traditional food into a growing business.
Tocco has 33 chefs on the platform, with around 45 products. While the chefs are mostly based in Keralam, the platform has also onboarded people from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. All sales happen only through the Tocco website.
Key features:
- Tocco trains chefs in packaging methods to preserve the food’s freshness for 30 days or more without preservatives.
- Orders are batched twice a week and either shipped from the chef's location to a Tocco hub in Kochi or Mumbai. High-volume products are dispatched directly to customers.
- The model is designed to remove barriers to participation. Women don't need to travel far, find buyers, or manage customer relationships. Tocco trains them at its Kochi kitchen, provides the recipes, specifies the ingredients, handles logistics, and, most importantly, guarantees a purchase order from day one.
<Funding Alert>
Startup: SILA
Amount: $100M
Round: Undisclosed
Startup: Tsecond.ai
Amount: $21.5M
Round: Undisclosed
Startup: Atlas
Amount: $6M
Round: Seed
Insight
Agritech’s post-boom correction
Between 2020 and 2022, more than $750 million flowed into Indian agritech startups promising to digitise agriculture across emerging markets. The pitch was straightforward: millions of smallholder farmers, large agricultural output, and rising demand would combine with technology to produce venture-scale outcomes.
But by 2025, that thesis had come under strain. Funding across the region fell sharply, deal activity slowed, and several well-funded startups struggled to sustain growth. What followed has often been described as a downturn. But data suggests something more structural: a correction in how investors understand agriculture itself.
Lessons and learnings:
- The lesson has been consistent across South Asia: scale does not guarantee viability.
- Cross-border expansion has proven to be challenging. Agriculture is deeply tied to local regulation, climate, and cropping patterns. A solution built for rice farmers in Bangladesh cannot be easily replicated for wheat growers in Pakistan or sugarcane producers elsewhere.
- The assumption that agritech companies could scale regionally—and justify billion-dollar valuations—has weakened. In its place is a more conservative model: smaller, market-specific businesses, with exits likely via corporate acquisitions. For investors, this means a recalibration.
News & updates
- Market moves: Global oil prices fell sharply and stock markets jumped after the US and Iran agreed to a conditional two-week ceasefire deal, which includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz waterway.
- Scars of war: International Monetary Fund’s research says wars cause large and persistent economic losses in countries where fighting takes place, and the economic scars can last for more than a decade.
Which company’s initial product was a check-in app called ‘Burbn’?
Answer: Instagram
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