Startup news and updates: daily roundup (October 9, 2026)

YourStory presents the daily news roundup from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Thursday, October 8 , 2026.

MSME-focused digital lender NeoGrowth has raised Rs 85 crore in an investment round led by FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, with participation from existing investor LeapFrog Investments.

The funding will support the company's next growth phase, including expanding access to credit for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), strengthening its digital lending capabilities, and deepening its market presence.

Kochi-based marine robotics company EyeROV has delivered two TROUT military-grade remotely operated underwater vehicles to the Indian Navy. The delivery forms part of an order for five systems and marks progress in India’s development of indigenous underwater robotic technology.

Developed under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) programme, TROUT is designed for naval and subsea operations, including underwater inspection, surveillance, reconnaissance, search and recovery, and robotic intervention.

The system underwent field trials and qualification processes covering manoeuvrability, navigation, endurance and performance in challenging underwater conditions. It also completed type testing and quality assurance procedures aligned with applicable military standards.

Accenture and Dell Technologies have expanded their more than 20-year collaboration by establishing the Accenture Dell Business Group. The initiative aims to help enterprises modernise infrastructure and deploy AI at scale, with greater control over data, costs, and performance.

The collaboration will focus on private AI infrastructure, hybrid and sovereign environments, agentic AI applications and integrated enterprise AI solutions. It will also support organisations operating in highly regulated industries that require stronger control over sensitive information.

Retail supermarket chain BuyBuyCart has launched a business-to-business platform designed to streamline wholesale operations and digital ordering across its franchise network.

The platform is being developed as a centralised system for wholesale and franchise orders. Its features include state-wise order tracking, value- and quantity-based analysis, franchise-wise ordering, salesperson performance monitoring and product-level sales insights. As the platform evolves, the company plans to enable franchise partners to place routine and replenishment orders directly through the portal.

JSW MG Motor India has selected eight startups as winners of the sixth edition of its MG Developer Program, an initiative supporting innovation in mobility and emerging technologies. The selected companies are Nayan Technologies, Technod8.AI, LiveNSense, LW3, Smaartbrand by Acquink Solutions, Fitsol, Cautio and Meta Materials Circular Market.

Their solutions cover road intelligence, agentic AI, industrial intelligence, electric-vehicle battery supply-chain compliance, customer decision intelligence, supply-chain decarbonisation, mobility intelligence, and automotive circular-economy infrastructure. The winners will work with JSW MG Motor India and its partners to explore pilot projects and real-world deployments.

Eternal’s Zomato and Blinkit have hosted the third edition of EV Bazaar in New Delhi to encourage electric vehicle adoption among delivery partners. The event attracted 2,500 delivery partners and ecosystem participants, including more than 20 electric vehicle manufacturers, which showcased over 30 electric two-wheeler models. The initiative enables delivery partners to compare vehicles, explore rental and ownership options, and understand charging and battery-swapping facilities.

Four startups founded by alumni of Indian educational institutions are developing AI-driven solutions across hardware procurement, enterprise software, pharmaceutical documentation and video editing. The document features Waybill, Ressl AI, Ritivel, and Cardboard.

Waybill, founded by Plaksha University alumni Rishi Laddha and Tushar Goyal, aims to simplify hardware procurement by combining supplier discovery, ordering, payments, shipping, customs and inventory management. Ressl AI, founded by IIT Bombay alumni Arushi Gandhi and Abhishek Eswaran, uses AI agents to automate repetitive maintenance tasks in enterprise software.

Ritivel, founded by IIT Bombay alumni Pavan Kalyan Tankala, Nirmit Arora and Gunin Gupta, develops AI tools to draft pharmaceutical regulatory documents while linking information to its sources. Cardboard, founded by BITS Pilani alumni Saksham Aggarwal and Ishan Sharma, is building a browser-based AI video editor that converts raw footage into initial cuts using natural-language instructions.

Aditya Birla World Academy hosted The Happy Place, a student-led mental health festival supported by Mpower, bringing students together to explore emotional well-being through creative expression. The latest edition, themed ‘The Messy Middle’, focused on uncertainty, setbacks and self-doubt experienced during adolescence. The school said it integrates mental health education into its curriculum through Minds Matter, which covers students in Grades 1 to 12. The initiative aims to encourage open conversations about emotions, develop coping strategies and help students seek support when needed.

Harness has acquired select assets from Augment Code, including Cosmos, the Auggie CLI products, the Code Context Engine and related technology. The acquisition aims to accelerate Harness’s efforts to automate software development across the software delivery lifecycle.

Cosmos will become the Harness Cosmos Software Factory Agent, designed to turn requirements, tickets and bug reports into code and tests before opening pull requests for review. The system uses AI agents to plan changes, write code and address reviewer feedback, with engineers involved where human judgement is required.

Harness plans to combine Augment’s codebase understanding capabilities with its Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, which provides information about builds, deployments, security and operational costs.

Cummins India has appointed Gbile Adewunmi as Managing Director of Cummins India Limited and India Regional Leader, effective November 1, 2026. He will take on the expanded responsibilities alongside his current role leading Industrial Markets within the company’s Power Systems business. Adewunmi currently serves as Vice President of Power Systems Industrial Markets, working with customers and partners across industrial sectors, including mining.

Kore.ai has announced the general availability of Autoloop, an optimisation engine within its Agent Platform, Artemis edition. The capability is designed to build, evaluate and continuously improve enterprise AI agents against business-defined goals, reducing reliance on manual adjustments. Autoloop assesses agents across task completion, accuracy, adherence to business rules, safety, consistency, user experience and cost efficiency. Its continuous process covers building, evaluation, diagnosis, optimisation and verification, both before deployment and during production.

Atlassian has announced new AI collaboration capabilities at its Team ’26 Europe conference in Amsterdam, including the Agentic Multiplayer Protocol (AMP). The framework establishes guidelines for AI agents to work alongside human teams across digital tools and workflows.

AMP covers collaboration within existing work environments, clear agent identities and ownership, and governance controls governing access to organisational information. It also supports auditability, permissions and human checkpoints for important decisions. Atlassian said people and agents collaborate more than 10 million times each month across its platform, while the number of Rovo agent users has doubled in six months.

Scalefusion has launched Veltar Vulnerability Management, a capability that connects vulnerability detection with remediation through its unified endpoint management platform. The offering enables IT and security teams to identify vulnerabilities across managed Windows and macOS devices, assess risks and deploy fixes through existing patch management workflows.

The system combines vulnerability severity, threat intelligence and endpoint information to help organisations prioritise remediation. Its signals include the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, Exploit Prediction Scoring System, CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities data and Device Risk Score.

Spardha School of Music has expanded its digital learning ecosystem with a training platform designed to support music and performing arts students beyond scheduled classes. The platform combines one-to-one teaching with practice tools, assignments, progress tracking and AI-powered feedback.

Students can access practice videos and sheet music and use tools such as metronomes, virtual keyboards, tabla, mridangam and tanpura. AI-powered session notes, monthly progress reports, and real-time practice feedback help learners track their progress. The platform also supports teacher performance monitoring and personalised professional development.

Mirror Security has been selected for the inaugural Google for Startups Gemini Startup Forum: Cybersecurity, joining 33 cybersecurity startups chosen globally. The company participated in the programme at Google’s London office on September 8 and 9, 2026, where founders engaged with experts from Google Cloud and Google DeepMind.

The company was selected under the AI Security and Governance category for its use of fully homomorphic encryption, which allows data to remain encrypted while AI models process it. Its technology aims to protect sensitive information contained in prompts, embeddings and agent messages as organisations deploy AI applications.

New Relic has announced AI Evaluation, a new capability within its AI Observability offering designed to assess generative AI performance across the application lifecycle. The platform evaluates response quality, behaviour, security risks and business impact, extending visibility beyond individual large language model interactions.

The capability uses automated evaluations to identify issues such as hallucinations, prompt injections, data leaks, toxicity and bias. It connects quality scores with application traces, helping engineering teams investigate problems across prompts, retrieval systems and backend infrastructure.

Rocket Learning hosted Udaan 2026 in New Delhi, bringing together policymakers, researchers, educators, civil society representatives and technology leaders to discuss early childhood care and education. The event, themed ‘From Surviving to Thriving’, focused on strengthening Anganwadis, increasing investment in early childhood development and using technology to support young children.

The conference also presented findings from an evaluation of a technology-based early childhood development model, examining its impact and cost-effectiveness.

The NDRF Wives Welfare Association (NWWA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mpower to launch Project Nirmal, a mental health and psychosocial support initiative for National Disaster Response Force personnel and their families.

The programme aims to address occupational stress associated with disaster response, demanding working conditions and sudden deployments. Services will include mental health awareness sessions, psychological screening, individual and group counselling, tele-counselling, crisis intervention and suicide prevention support. The initiative will also establish regional teams and operate a dedicated multilingual helpline round the clock.

Actor Varun Dhawan has joined Better Nutrition, a biofortified staples brand featured on Shark Tank India, as an investor and brand ambassador. His association with the company began with his own farming journey, which sparked an interest in soil, seeds and nutrient-rich food. He joins existing brand ambassador PV Sindhu as Better Nutrition looks to expand awareness of biofortified food among Indian consumers.

Better Nutrition offers everyday staples, including atta, dal, rice and millets, made from crops developed to contain higher levels of essential micronutrients such as iron and zinc. The company uses biofortified seeds, soil science and farm-level testing, including X-ray fluorescence technology, to measure nutrient levels. As part of the association, Dhawan's farm will also be developed as a biofortified farm in partnership with the company.

Vivriti Asset Management (VAM) has completed the lifecycle and exit of its Vintage II funds within the stipulated period, returning more than Rs 3,400 crore to investors through capital repayments and income distributions across two fund vintages.

The Vintage II funds raised Rs 1,700 crore in investor commitments and invested over Rs 3,500 crore across more than 45 portfolio companies. Their investments spanned infrastructure, clean energy, manufacturing, logistics and enterprise software. The funds collectively returned over Rs 2,260 crore in capital and income. The moderate-risk scheme generated a gross internal rate of return (IRR) of approximately 15%, while the conservative scheme delivered around 12%. Net returns were approximately 13% and 10.5%, respectively. VAM has invested over Rs 12,500 crore across 125-plus portfolio companies since inception.

Kidswear brand Mi Arcus has partnered with designer label Papa Don't Preach to launch a premium festive collection for children on October 12. The collection will be available through Mi Arcus stores, its website and e-commerce platforms, including Nykaa Fashion and Myntra. The collaboration marks Papa Don't Preach’s first partnership with a kidswear brand and Mi Arcus’s entry into ethnic wear. The collection combines playful designs and bold colours with soft fabrics and comfortable silhouettes.

BUSY Infotech, a subsidiary of IndiaMART, is targeting revenue of approximately Rs 1,000 crore over the next five years, aiming for five- to sixfold growth as Indian MSMEs increasingly adopt digital business management tools.

The accounting and GST compliance software provider reported revenue of Rs 170 crore in FY26. Its revenue from operations rose around 47% year-on-year to Rs 36 crore in Q1 FY27, while cash from operations more than doubled to Rs 44 crore in FY26 from Rs 21 crore in FY25.

More than six lakh companies use BUSY software. The company plans to accelerate customer acquisition, expand cloud and mobile offerings, introduce AI-powered features and strengthen its presence in western, southern and eastern India. It will also explore strategic acquisitions to expand its products and market reach.