Indian AI startup Emergent raises $70 million in round led by SoftBank, Khosla Ventures

By Haripriya Suresh

BENGALURU, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Indian software application creator startup Emergent has raised $70 million in funding as part of a ​round led by SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures, the ‌company said on Tuesday.

The Series B round came four months after the startup raised its $23 ‌million Series A round from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Prosus and others, and additional funding from the Google AI Futures Fund in December. The current round also saw the participation of Prosus, Lightspeed, Together Fund and Y Combinator.

The company ⁠did not disclose the ‌valuation at which the Series B round was raised.

SoftBank last invested in an Indian startup over three years ago, ‍and has largely only done follow-on rounds to retain its stake in companies.

As per the company, it has over 5 million users and $50 million in annual recurring ​revenue within seven months of its launch.

“Emergent is early in shaping ‌how software gets created and monetized over the next decade, not just the next product cycle, and its users are quick to share their success,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

Emergent co-founder and CEO Mukund Jha, who founded the now-defunct hyperlocal delivery and quick commerce firm Dunzo, ⁠told Reuters that the startup wants to ​use the proceeds to expand its research ​and engineering teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, and to build more products.

“A lot of the investment will go ‍into building and further ⁠advancing our products and also advancing our research into coding agents,” Jha said.

The startup is seeing interest from people who want to ⁠build a business on top of apps, he said, adding that the “democratization of software ‌building” is going to be “a massive trend”.

(Reporting by Haripriya Suresh ‌in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)