Startup news and updates: Daily roundup (August 5, 2026)

YourStory brings you today’s headlines with the latest developments across sectors.

Latest news

Freshworks beats revenue estimates, turns profitable in Q2

Nasdaq-listed software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks has reported a return to profitability in the second quarter of 2026, with a 16% increase in revenue as demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings continued to strengthen.

The company posted a net profit of $3.2 million for the quarter, compared to a net loss of $1.7 million in the corresponding period last year. Revenue rose to $237.4 million in the April-June quarter from $204.7 million a year earlier.

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Funding news

Insurtech startup InRisk Labs raises $27M in Series A funding round

Ahmedabad headquartered insurtech startup InRisk Labs has raised $27 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Northpoint Capital.

InRisk Labs will use the funds to deepen the group’s underwriting, actuarial, catastrophe-modelling and AI capabilities; expand its coverage across natural catastrophe and climate risk, as well as other non-life segments such as marine cargo and motor; and to accelerate development of parametric and structured reinsurance products. It will also utilise the capital to scale the operations of its subsidiary, EarthRe.

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Hulp raises $2.6M seed funding to expand AI-powered concierge platform

Personal assistance platform Hulp has raised $2.6 million in a seed funding round led by Sparrow Capital and BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from DeVC (Z47) and angel investors including PB Fintech Co-founder and Chairman Yashish Dahiya. The funding will support expansion of the company's AI workflows, strengthen technology, product and leadership teams, and scale operations across India.

Founded by former PolicyBazaar executive Tarun Mathur, Neha Kulwal and Vishal Singh Khutel, Hulp combines AI with human personal assistants to help users manage everyday household and lifestyle tasks. The company currently operates in Delhi-NCR and plans to expand to six more cities.

Vingo raises $1.2M in seed funding round led by IndiaQuotient

Consumer-to-consumer marketplace Vingo has raised Rs 10 crore, about $1.2 million, in a seed funding round led by IndiaQuotient, with participation from Inuka Capital and Credgenics Founder Rishabh Goel. The funds will be used to strengthen the platform, expand its trust infrastructure, study user behaviour, and support targeted marketing.

Founded in 2026 by students from BITS Pilani and IIT Delhi, Vingo enables users to buy and sell pre-owned products through identity verification, community-led discovery, escrow-backed payments, and bidding. The platform currently operates in Bengaluru and plans to strengthen its position in India's growing re-commerce market.

Finvolve, India Accelerator invest Rs 6.5 Cr in Zoppler Systems

Finvolve and India Accelerator have invested Rs 6.5 crore in defence and dual-use technology startup Zoppler Systems to accelerate product development, expand engineering capabilities, strengthen field validation, and scale deployments.

Zoppler develops indigenous RF (radio frequency) sensing products and a vendor-agnostic Edge AI-powered autonomy platform that detects, locates and classifies RF activity while enabling real-time decision-making across airborne, ground, naval, and future space applications.

The platform integrates with compatible legacy systems without requiring replacement. Beyond defence, the technology has applications in critical infrastructure, ports, airports, energy, industrial facilities and logistics requiring advanced sensing and autonomous decision-making.

Other news

UNESCO launches free AI ethics course on Coursera

UNESCO has launched its first free online course on Coursera—Global MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the Ethics of AI—developed in collaboration with LG AI Research. The course is designed to help learners apply UNESCO's global AI ethics framework in practical settings by exploring topics such as privacy, transparency, sustainability and human autonomy.

Available in 11 languages, including Hindi, the nine-hour programme features hands-on projects and insights from experts at institutions including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Toronto and the Alan Turing Institute. It is aimed at students, researchers, policymakers and technology professionals, and requires no advanced technical background.

Cars24, DPIIT partner to support AI and mobility startups

Cars24 has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to support India's startup ecosystem through AI, mobility and road-safety initiatives. The collaboration will provide early-stage startups with founder mentorship, AI enablement, skilling, investment access and market linkages.

Key initiatives include the Cars24 Founders' Fellowship, mobility and autotech skilling programmes, AI support through Cars24 Labs, investor access via Fuel by Cars24, and an annual innovation challenge and road-safety hackathon. DPIIT will support the partnership through the Startup India platform by enabling ecosystem access, outreach and joint programmes.

QubeHealth-Pay, Petos partner to simplify pet healthcare payments

Healthcare financial platform QubeHealth-Pay has partnered with pet health insurance platform Petos to integrate QubePay into the Petos app. The integration enables Petos policyholders to pay veterinary bills, earn healthcare-linked cashback and access Qube's affordability tools alongside their insurance benefits.

The companies expect the partnership to facilitate over Rs 50 crore in pet healthcare payments over the next 18 months. Petos also aims to sell more than 10,000 pet insurance policies over the next two years as demand for pet healthcare and insurance continues to grow in India.

Cisco, IIT Delhi launch AI and cybersecurity hub

Cisco and IIT Delhi have launched the Cisco Technology Hub on AI and Cybersecurity to strengthen research, innovation and skill development in India. The three-year collaboration will focus on advancing AI and cybersecurity research, building talent and fostering ecosystem partnerships.

The hub aims to become a leading centre for AI and cybersecurity innovation in the Indo-Pacific region by working with government stakeholders, academia and industry to strengthen digital security frameworks and address real-world challenges. Cisco said the initiative combines its technology expertise with IIT Delhi's academic capabilities to support India's digital transformation and help develop a highly skilled workforce in emerging technologies.

Cleartrip expands bus travel services

Cleartrip, a Flipkart company, has launched Bus 2.0, expanding its road travel offering to more than 6.5 lakh routes across over 6,000 cities. The platform provides access to nearly 95% of India's private bus inventory alongside government-operated services, allowing users to book buses along with flights, trains and hotels.

Cleartrip said more than 55% of its bus bookings now come from Gen Z travellers, who increasingly prefer buses for affordable leisure and homebound trips. The enhanced platform aims to improve connectivity to destinations beyond rail and air networks while offering a simplified booking experience and broader route coverage across the country.

BLUE launches AI-native video infrastructure platform

Bengaluru-based AI startup BLUE (KGraph AI Solutions) has launched an AI-native enterprise video infrastructure platform powered by a semantic codec that compresses video by encoding its meaning instead of raw data. The company said the platform can reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 90%, lower storage costs by up to 10 times, and cut compute requirements for semantic video retrieval by 5-10 times, helping enterprises reduce operational expenses by up to 40%.

Designed for organisations managing large CCTV deployments, the platform has already been adopted by companies including Britannia, Haldiram's, HPCL, McDonald's franchisee CPRL and MAFFFL. BLUE expects the launch to drive 10-fold revenue growth by FY30.

SAP Labs India hosts Startup Social 2026

SAP Labs India hosted the latest edition of SAP Startup Social, bringing together startups, enterprises, investors, policymakers and ecosystem partners to accelerate enterprise AI adoption and deeptech innovation. The event showcased the SAP Startup Studio Cohort 2026, comprising 16 startups working across enterprise AI, robotics, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, sustainable manufacturing, and automation.

Through SAP's six-month accelerator, participating startups collaborate with SAP's product and engineering teams to develop enterprise-ready solutions. Supported by Karnataka Digital Economy Mission, Nasscom and the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, the platform aims to strengthen India's innovation ecosystem. Since its launch in 2016, SAP Startup Social has attracted more than 2,000 participants from the startup, enterprise and investment communities.

Aziro launches enterprise AI assistant CAWi

AI-first product engineering company Aziro has launched CAWi, an AI-native enterprise assistant designed to help organisations access information spread across multiple internal systems. Unlike conventional AI assistants, CAWi securely connects with existing enterprise applications without copying sensitive data, allowing employees to retrieve information and execute tasks from a single interface.

The platform can analyse user queries, locate relevant information, send reminders, schedule meetings and initiate workflows while complying with organisational security and access policies. Aziro said CAWi eliminates the need for employees to switch between multiple applications, improving productivity while maintaining enterprise-grade governance and data privacy across business systems.

Cloud.in launches quantum governance platform

Hostin Services Pvt. Ltd. (Cloud.in), an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, has launched QPulse, an enterprise platform designed to provide governance, visibility and consumption insights for quantum computing environments. Initially developed for Amazon Braket workloads, the platform has been designed as a technology-agnostic solution capable of supporting broader quantum ecosystems.

QPulse enables enterprises to monitor resource utilisation, track usage across teams and understand associated costs through a secure, multi-tenant platform. The company said the solution addresses growing enterprise demand for governance as quantum computing transitions from research to commercial adoption, helping organisations manage quantum resources efficiently while improving transparency and operational control.

Com Olho secures cybersecurity patent

Deeptech cybersecurity company Com Olho has received a 20-year patent from the Indian Patent Office for its AI-powered crowdsourced cybersecurity threat identification and management system. The patented technology combines artificial intelligence with a nationwide network of vetted cybersecurity researchers to enable continuous threat discovery, vulnerability validation and risk management.

Unlike conventional security assessments conducted periodically, the platform provides real-time identification and validation of vulnerabilities across web applications, mobile platforms and digital infrastructure. Com Olho said the patent strengthens its technology portfolio and supports enterprises and public sector organisations in proactively identifying and mitigating cybersecurity risks through continuous security monitoring and AI-driven automation.

Tribe Kombucha opens automated manufacturing plant

Tribe Kombucha has inaugurated a dedicated manufacturing facility near Saputara in Gujarat, becoming one of India's first automated plants built exclusively for kombucha production. Spread across one lakh square feet, including a 24,000-square-foot precision-controlled production floor, the facility can manufacture up to one million units per month.

The company said the location provides access to clean air and water essential for fermentation while automation ensures consistency, hygiene and preservation of live probiotic cultures. Operated by a team of 20 specialists, the facility will support Tribe's nationwide expansion and growing demand for probiotic beverages while maintaining production quality at scale.

Newton School launches startup incubation programme

Newton School of Technology has strengthened its entrepreneurship ecosystem through Startup Foundry, an incubation programme that supports students in building technology startups while pursuing engineering degrees. The initiative guides founders through idea validation, prototype development, business model creation and market launch before connecting them with investors.

The programme is backed by StartX, a Rs 1-crore seed fund that offers pre-seed investments of up to Rs 10 lakh to selected student ventures. Founded with support from Nexus Venture Partners' Pratik Poddar and entrepreneur Varun Mayya, the initiative aims to encourage innovation and provide aspiring entrepreneurs with mentorship, funding opportunities and direct exposure to venture capital investors.

Medi Assist expands AI-powered healthcare platform

Medi Assist Healthcare Services has introduced enhanced versions of its AI-powered healthcare solutions—MAven Intelligent Document Processing, MAgnum and MAven Guard—to improve claims processing for insurers and hospitals. The company said its subsidiary now completes more than half of cashless pre-authorisations within five minutes, helping patients begin treatment faster.

The upgraded platform has also achieved a Net Promoter Score of 67 while reducing claimant calls by over 60%. Medi Assist's AI document processor converts hospital records into structured clinical summaries, enabling quicker claim decisions. The platform also provides real-time claim tracking and improves fraud detection by up to 50%, enhancing efficiency across the healthcare insurance ecosystem.

Matrix Geo Solutions bags drone service order from Northeast Frontier Railway

Matrix Geo Solutions, a geospatial technology and engineering consultancy has received a letter of acceptance from Northeast Frontier Railway for undertaking a drone-based visual, thermal and geometrical inspection of 25 kV overhead equipment under the Lumding Division.

The project involves the deployment of drone technology to conduct visual, thermal and geometrical inspections of railway overhead electrification infrastructure. The inspection will generate high-resolution aerial and thermal data to support the assessment of overhead equipment assets, enabling informed maintenance planning and infrastructure monitoring. Drone-enabled surveys combine aerial imaging, thermal analytics, geospatial processing, and engineering assessment to evaluate infrastructure efficiently while minimising disruption to railway operations.

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