Nester, a premium design-first, tech-driven homeware brand, has raised INR 19 crore in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Fireside Ventures and OTP Ventures. The round saw participation from Sadev Ventures and Titan Capital as well. The cap table portfolio continues to include early stage angel investors Shezan Bhojani, Co-founder & CEO of Design Café, and Himanshu Chandra, Co-founder of Progcap.Founded with a vision to create thoughtfully designed homeware that elevates everyday living, Nester focuses on building appliances that fit seamlessly into modern Indian homes. The brand is defined by minimalistic design, high-quality construction, and intuitive functionality, and tech-engineered products that simplify routines, work efficiently, and integrate naturally into daily life without demanding attention. The product innovation is driven by tech-engineered, multi-functional products in order to declutter homes and drive higher value with design and feature upgrades.The home appliances and homeware market in India is at an inflection point, driven by rising disposable income and exposure to global quality and design standards. While the demand for premium products is high, the current market continues to be dominated by legacy players focused on price-led communication. Also, most products have minimal to none design changes with incremental feature upgrades. This has created a clear opportunity for new-age brands to…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Shares of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) fell sharply on Wednesday after the Government of India announced a stake sale through an Offer for Sale (OFS), triggering heavy selling across the counter. The stock dropped over 6% in early trade, hitting intraday lows and wiping out recent gains, despite the company reporting strong Q3 FY26 financial results only weeks ago.The decline reflects investor caution around large government divestments, especially when offered at a discount, and fears of increased supply pressure in the market.Government OFS Triggers BHEL Share Price FallThe government formally launched the OFS on 11 February 2026, aiming to divest up to 5% stake in BHEL as part of its broader PSU disinvestment plan.Key details of the OFS:Base offer: 3% stake (around 10.44 crore shares)Green-shoe option: Additional 2% stake (around 6.96 crore shares)Total potential divestment: 5%Floor price: INR 254 per shareEstimated base deal size: ~INR 4,422 croreTotal potential value (if 5% sold): Over INR 7,000 crore, based on pre-dip market capitalisation near INR 1.4 lakh croreTrading for anchor investors took place on 10 February, while the OFS opened for institutional and retail investors on 11 February from 9:15 AM to 3:30 PM IST, with settlement expected on a T+1…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Eicher Motors, the parent company of Royal Enfield, saw its shares jump over 6.5% to a record high following the release of impressive third-quarter results for the period ending December 2025. This rally marked the stock’s best day in more than five years, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s robust financial performance.Q3 Financial Results Beat Expectations with Profit and Revenue GrowthEicher Motors reported a consolidated net profit after tax of INR 1,421 crore for Q3 FY26, up 21% from the same quarter last year. Revenue from operations climbed 23% to around INR 6,114 crore, driven by higher sales volumes across its key segments.Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) also hit a high, rising 30% year-on-year to INR 1,557 crore with margins at 26%. Standalone net profit stood at INR 1,290 crore, showing sequential growth from the previous quarter despite a one-off charge related to new labour codes. Basic earnings per share came in at INR 51.79 on a consolidated basis, beating analyst estimates.Royal Enfield, the flagship motorcycle brand, sold 325,773 units in the quarter, a 21% increase from 269,039 units a year earlier. This strong demand for mid-size bikes helped push volumes higher. Meanwhile, VE Commercial Vehicles, another…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

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