In a nation like India that loves chai, drinking tea is a natural, everyday practice. But drinking coffee is often an out-of-home occasion, evokes deep conversations and sometimes leads to business ideas that fructify into cult offerings. For Arman Sood, Ashwajeet Singh and Ajai Thandi, founders of the new-age coffee brand Sleepy Owl, the last one came true. Driven by their passion for the perfect brew, they left their corporate jobs and started crafting great-tasting coffees with custom flavours, designed for home consumption. Set up in 2016, the Delhi-based challenger brand started production with a ready to drink, Cold Brew Box. Today, the VC-funded startup offers a diverse range that covers cold brew packets and hot brew bags, instant coffee, cold coffee cans, South Indian filter coffee, ground coffee varieties, coffee merchandise and recently launched protein Coffee (Profee) and RTD Matcha variants. About 55% of their revenue comes from dry coffee powder and the remaining 45% from other coffee-based beverages.  Sleepy Owl coffee is available in more than 15K retail stores, online marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart, quick commerce platforms like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto, and its D2C website.  How Three Friends Turned Their Love For Coffee Into A…  ​Read MoreInc42 Media

Titan Company has wowed the market with Q3 FY26 results showing 61% net profit growth to INR 1,684 crore. Shares jumped to a fresh 52-week high, reflecting strong confidence in its jewellery-led performance. Festive demand and expansion plans fuelled the upbeat outlook.Titan Q3 FY26 Results: Profit and Revenue SurgeNet profit soared to INR 1,684 crore from INR 1,050 crore last year, up 61%. Total income hit INR 25,567 crore, a 43% rise from INR 17,868 crore. EBIT grew 63% to INR 2,657 crore, with margins at 10.8%.Jewellery led growth with 42% expansion. Domestic brands rose 40% to INR 19,921 crore, CaratLane grew 42% to INR 1,537 crore, and international business surged 83% to INR 1,058 crore. Watches added 14% to INR 1,295 crore, driven mainly by premium product demand.Share Price Rallies to New High on Earnings BeatPost-results on 9–10 February 2026, shares climbed nearly 3% to INR 4,329.60, marking a 52-week high from the previous close of INR 4,257.80. By 11 February 2026 at 11:44 AM IST, the stock was trading at INR 4,308, up 1.71%, with a market capitalisation of around INR 3,79,000 crore.Trading volume surged to 8.89 lakh shares as buyers rushed in. The stock opened at INR…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Paramount Vs. Netflix has taken another turn with Paramount, making sweet changes to its offer. WBD currently has a pending deal with Netflix ($27.75 per share, all-cash) valued at $72 billion. It appears Paramount is unwilling to let WBD go without a fight. Paramount has now introduced a “Ticking fee” in its deal. However, there’s no change (or raise) in its original $30 per share price to take over all of WBD. The company is willing to pay a penalty of 25 cents per share per quarter for delays. Therefore, if government approvals take longer than expected, WBD shareholders get paid extra. What’s more to the new deal? Is Paramount financially capable of this? What is Paramount’s leadership saying? For all that, learn more.  Paramount’s Sweetened Offer to WBDA “Ticking fee” to compensate for any delays in payment. For instance, Paramount is offering 25 cents per share paid for every quarter the deal is delayed. This benefit starts on December 31, 2026. The company also assured shareholders that it would pay them a premium if regulators took too long to approve the merger. And this equals about $650 million in cash per quarter overall. Not just that, Paramount says it would cover…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

India’s entrepreneurial future isn’t taking shape in the usual places. While startup hubs continue to thrive, a parallel story is emerging from Jaipur, Surat, Vadodara, and hundreds of smaller cities across the country, where a new generation of founders are building businesses that serve customers nationwide.These entrepreneurs, often called Bharatpreneurs, operate with a fundamentally different playbook. While conventional startups track metrics like monthly active users, app downloads, or total addressable market size, these founders measure success differently: repeat purchase rates, cash flow positivity, customer acquisition cost versus lifetime value, and profitability per order. They’re not building for the next funding round—they’re building for next quarter’s revenue.Their focus is pragmatic rather than aspirational. Instead of chasing unicorn valuations or rapid scale at any cost, they’re solving tangible problems: a manufacturer in Ludhiana selling directly to retailers nationwide, an artisan collective in Kutch reaching urban customers without middlemen, a food products brand from Nashik competing with legacy FMCG players. These are real businesses serving real customers, often bootstrapped or grown on minimal external capital, where unit economics matter from day one.This approach has created resilient, sustainable enterprises. But for years, one constraint repeatedly held them back regardless of business model or market…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

ThirdAI Automation has raised $3 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Endiya Partners and Capria Ventures. The capital will be used to scale product development, expand teams in India and overseas, and accelerate deployments with equipment manufacturers and semiconductor fabs. Founded in 2024 by Dr Vivek Vishwakarma and Dr Sainyam Galhotra, ThirdAI is an India–US based company with global operations. ThirdAI builds AI-powered RCA and troubleshooting platform for semiconductor manufacturing, using causal AI to diagnose failures faster, reduce unplanned downtime, and improve yield in production-critical environments. The AI boom is pushing material complexity higher, even as fabs and toolmakers hit physical limits — driving yields down as chips grow more complex. Despite large investments in industrial analytics, existing solutions focus on prediction or anomaly detection and offer limited support when a tool goes down. Root cause analysis (RCA) in semiconductor fabs remains largely manual, requiring engineers to spend 20–40 hours per incident analysing data across multiple systems. ThirdAI addresses this gap with Causal AI, an emerging technology well-suited to strategically address crucial bottlenecks in complex manufacturing. Leveraging a causal AI–powered RCA copilot that automates the process by identifying precise cause-and-effect relationships across equipment logs, sensor data, images, and operational records, ThirdAI enables engineers to move quickly from failure to resolution. In pilot and production environments,…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Long before IPO bells, industry partnerships, or headlines, there was a boy who struggled to pay his school fees but never lost faith in the power of education. That belief, passed down by a mother who insisted that learning came before wealth, would one day shape one of India’s most quietly successful education companies.Founded in 2009 by Dr Sanjay Salunkhe, Jaro Education was never about chasing scale for the sake of scale. It was about solving a deeply personal problem: How do ambitious Indians, regardless of geography or income, access world-class education while continuing to work and support their families?Today, Jaro has enabled over 3.5 lakh learners, profitable from day one, proving that sustainable education businesses in India can be built with integrity, patience, and purpose. In an ecosystem often dominated by headlines around valuations, funding rounds, and rapid scale, some of India’s most meaningful businesses are built quietly — away from the spotlight, grounded in fundamentals, and driven by purpose.A childhood rooted in learning, values, and convictionDr Salunkhe’s relationship with education is deeply personal. Growing up with limited financial means, paying school fees was often a struggle. His inspiration came from his mother and elder sister, who instilled in…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

Welcome to The AI Shift by Inc42, our all-new newsletter that delves deep into the world of artificial intelligence, LLMs, big tech giants and the major trends sweeping the Indian startup and tech ecosystem. Here’s the sixth edition; do send us your feedback and suggestions so we can improve as we go along!  Just over a year ago, OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” to talk about using AI to do “dumb” and menial coding tasks. What started as a riff on AI-powered lazy software development has now turned into a serious professional reality. Nowadays, thanks to memes and serious startups in this space, pretty much everyone knows vibe coding means building software by telling a chatbot your intent.  Instead of writing every line of code, a user can describe the vibe, the look, the feel, and the function. The AI then does the heavy lifting of writing code.  Across startups and enterprises, intent-first, AI-assisted building is reshaping how software gets shipped, who gets to build it, and how accountability is distributed. Teams are moving faster than before, and capabilities are spreading beyond engineering. This does not mean that AI-assisted software development is spelling doom for…  ​Read MoreInc42 Media

Seven, a Mumbai-based fintech startup and one of India’s first contactless wearable payments companies, has raised a strategic pre-Series A investment from Shivam Malhotra, Founder of Malsons Ventures, a global entertainment venture studio and investment firm headquartered in Mumbai. As part of the transaction, Malhotra has acquired a 1% stake in the company.With this investment, Malhotra joins Seven’s existing investor base, which includes Venture Catalysts, Vinners, and Anchorage Capital Partners backed by the Sheth Family Office. The funds will be deployed for innovation, market penetration, product development, team expansion and overall business growth.Seven, best known for its flagship product 7 Ring, previously featured on Shark Tank India and has also entered the semi-final round of The Drapers Show India 2025. The startup operates in India’s rapidly growing digital payments ecosystem, which is projected to reach Rs 577 trillion by FY29.The 7 Ring is a certified wearable payment device supported by RuPay and MasterCard. Built on NFC technology, it enables tap-and-pay transactions without the need for charging, OTPs, PINs, or smartphone apps. The ring integrates with a prepaid wallet on the RuPay network and is powered by UPI.Commenting on the Investment, Malhotra said, “In the entertainment world, we trade in attention;…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

We are all drawn toward videos. After all, videos tend to grab our attention and make way more sense in terms of the time invested. Video content has become a powerful tool to capture the attention of website visitors. According to Wyzowl, over 91% of marketers use video content on their websites. However, creating high-quality videos can be time-consuming and require significant video editing skills. Thankfully, with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), there are now several AI-powered tools available to streamline the video creation process and save you time.In this article, we will explore a list of some of the best AI video generators in 2026 that can help you create impressive videos faster and more efficiently.Top AI Video Creation Platforms Comparison Table ToolFree PlanStarting PriceUSP / Key FeatureBest ForPictory✅ Yes (3-video trial)$19/monthURL-to-video generation, 3M+ assetsQuick marketing or blog videosSynthesia✅ Free demo$29/monthRealistic AI avatars & voices, 120+ languagesTraining, corporate videosWave Video✅ Yes$16/monthVideo hosting capabilityMarketers & content creatorsDesigns.AI❌ No$24.92/monthText-to-video generation, script creationCreators needing multiple assetsRunway✅ Yes$12/monthText prompt video generation, AI effectsExperimental & creative videosLumen5❌ No$19/monthConverts written content to videoBlog and content marketingFlexClip✅ Yes$19.99/monthAI subtitles, text-to-speech in 140+ languagesSocial media & small businesses What is an AI Video Generator? An AI…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Margins Cushion Wakefit’s Profitability Fresh from its IPO, Wakefit reported a profitable Q3 FY26. Despite seasonal discounts and a CFO transition, the D2C furniture and mattress brand clocked record quarterly revenues, alongside a sharp improvement in its margins.  Here is a snapshot of Wakefit’s Q3 numbers: Profits stood at ₹31.9 Cr compared to a loss of ₹2.4 Cr in Q3 FY25 Revenue from operations rose 9.4% YoY to ₹421.3 Cr  EBITDA improved 158% YoY to ₹70.3 Cr, while margins expanded to 53.8%  Total expenses rose a marginal 0.4% YoY to ₹396.7 Cr  The Margin Play: The D2C brand flipped to profitability in Q3 on the back of gross margin expansion that offset modest top-line growth and a one-off labour code expense. What also helped was operating leverage kicking in across its core categories, even as management flagged temporary demand shifts tied to GST changes that favour other consumption baskets. The Omnichannel Drift: Wakefit also continued to diversify beyond pure ecommerce in Q3. Own channels drove the majority of sales, giving Wakefit pricing control and customer data depth. Similarly, marketplace presence and new company-owned stores brought incremental reach.  On the product front, mattresses remained Wakefit’s undisputed cash cow, while furniture and…  ​Read MoreInc42 Media