The daily news roundup from YourStory presents fresh events from the Indian startup ecosystem and related fields for Wednesday, September 2, 2026.
A new breakthrough in overcoming the glass ceiling has been achieved in the Indian Air Force: Major Vice Admiral Shakti Sharma has become the first female officer (non-medical profile) in the country's armed forces to receive the rank of Major Vice Admiral or equivalent. She took up the position of Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Education) at Air Force Headquarters on September 1. Previously, this officer held the rank of Air Commodore.
Indian startup Magron, based in Bengaluru, is developing three electric motorcycles, integrating technologies such as wireless charging and AI-based driving assistance.
Minimac Systems, located in Pune, raised ₹30 crore in a round led by Rainmatter from Zerodha, with participation from several venture funds. These funds will be directed towards research and development in miniature treatment and fluid analysis infrastructure, as well as scaling the Recycling on Wheels hubs and developing the Lubricants as a Service model. Founded by Anshuman Agrawal, Minimac specializes in lubricant lifecycle management and circularity principles; the company reported deploying over 2500 systems with a total capacity exceeding 300,000 liters per minute, utilizing over 14 million liters in the production cycle, and cited EPR for used oil as a regulatory incentive.
72 Street raised ₹4 crore from angel investors and UHNIs to support its application 72 Street and Venty, an AI-powered stock market researcher. The company plans to expand into Futures and Options, model portfolios, mutual funds, and commodities. Of the total ₹3 crore invested in the company, 45% was allocated to developing technologies and products for the application and Venty. 72 Street, founded by Rohit Agarwal and Phal Ganch in late 2025, is a SEBI-registered analytics platform. Venty scans over 3800 stocks listed on NSE and BSE using fundamental, technical, and sentiment indicators, with every derived insight being verified by registered SEBI analysts before publication.
Creedom, acting as an AI growth coach for content creators, raised ₹4.1 crore in a seed round supported by a group of investors, including corporate executives and startup founders. The capital raised will be used to enhance the product for Indian creators, expand into the US, and develop AI capabilities. Creedom, which was initially an educational platform, has reached over 1.5 lakh creators in India. Its platform analyzes Instagram and YouTube metrics, providing personalized content recommendations through its AI companion.
Juspay introduced Breeze Universal—a global pilot that allows users to find brands across various AI platforms, including ChatGPT and Claude, as well as on sellers' own pages. This product enables buyers to discover, compare, and purchase goods within a single AI dialogue among participating brands, integrating with stores on Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and custom platforms. Users can invoke @breeze in ChatGPT to get recommendations. Breeze Universal, built on Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, is intended for banks, fintech companies, marketplaces, and brands looking to implement agent shopping without complex infrastructure. According to Juspay, it will be available as components, a ready-made kit, or an API, and will also be able to publish @brand applications within ChatGPT.
MediBuddy announced the appointment of Shalab Srivastava as Head of Operations on September 2, 2026. He will focus on strengthening systems, technology-based automation, and execution as the company's healthcare network scales. MediBuddy reported a positive EBITDA in the fourth fiscal year of '26, with annual revenue exceeding ₹1500 crore and an increase in online consultations of over 90% year-over-year. Srivastava has over twenty years of experience at Swiggy, Flipkart, Reliance Retail, Cognizant, and Ernst and Young. At Swiggy, he managed product, design, and operations for the driver organization. At Flipkart, he served as Vice President and National Head of Supply Chain for large and furniture products. He holds a BTech from IIT BHU and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur.
PayGlocal has registered as a Money Services Business with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, marking its entry into the international market. This registration allows the cross-border payment firm to operate in the US while it builds compliance, banking, and payment infrastructure. The company reported processing transactions worth over $4.5 billion and serving more than 10,000 merchants in over 180 countries. Being licensed by the Reserve Bank of India as a Payment Aggregator for online and cross-border operations, PayGlocal facilitates payment acceptance in over 130 currencies and using more than 40 global and local payment methods.
Luma Fertility marked its first year of operation with 120 current pregnancies and 22 babies born. The company announced the Luma Hope Grant to fully fund 30 IVF cycles, starting with the first cohort of 10 cycles for eligible individuals and couples. Expansion is planned to 30 centers nationwide, beginning with three additional centers in Mumbai. Supported by Surge from Peak XV, with participation from Ameya Shah and Vijay Taparia, Luma reported that its flagship center in Mumbai reached the break-even point and showed a 77% success rate for self-cycles. The company emphasized the use of RFID-based gamete tracking and AI-supported clinical workflows, and mentioned Twelve for Herself—a results-oriented egg freezing program.
Zoho released Catalyst 3.0—a full-featured cloud platform for stack development, ready to work with agents, featuring AI-IDE integrations, Agent Skills support, MCP, and AI-driven workflows. The company stated that the platform is designed to assist developers in transitioning applications from AI coding assistants to production infrastructure without leaving the coding environment. A free student program for educational and non-commercial use was also introduced. Catalyst 3.0 includes a non-interactive CLI and MCP support, while orchestration routes requests through paths based on skill routing. Zoho also made its AI skills available in an open repository and open-sourced the SDK, CLI, and Slyte JavaScript framework for Catalyst. The company stated that the platform is ready for immediate use.
Swiggy and Hero MotoCorp have partnered to provide Swiggy Food Marketplace and Instamart delivery partners access to affordable personal mobility and road safety training. Under the partnership, Swiggy drivers can choose their preferred Hero model via the Swiggy app and avail exclusive prices at Hero dealerships. Drivers will also gain access to customized financing solutions, including options with up to 90% loan coverage and competitive interest rates.
Razorpay launched RAY—an AI account manager on WhatsApp in partnership with IndusInd Bank, with Bajaj Finance being one of the first companies to implement the platform. Designed for businesses of all sizes, RAY allows founders to manage payments and receive support through conversational interaction rather than traditional dashboards. Razorpay reported that businesses have already conducted over 20,000 conversations with RAY. Users can send a text message or voice note requesting a payment summary, transaction analysis, or sales forecast, and the AI will respond in natural language.
Decathlon Sports India is collaborating with FirstCry to make sports equipment more accessible to young families across the country. This collaboration supports Decathlon's vision of attracting new customer segments and promoting active well-being through sports. As part of the partnership, FirstCry customers can access a curated selection of Decathlon children's goods, including apparel, footwear, accessories, and sporting goods. The partnership gives Decathlon access to the FirstCry community, which comprises over 25 million registered users in metro and Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
India's Account Aggregator ecosystem has surpassed 500 million executed consents, marking five years of consent-based, customer-controlled financial data exchange. Currently, over 1100 regulated entities operate on the platform, and over 2.8 billion financial accounts are ready for exchange, with more than 310 million accounts linked by customers. Furthermore, the system has facilitated over ₹600 crore data requests to date. Lending remains the most sought-after use case. In FY2026, lending using Account Aggregators reached ₹3.82 lakh crore across 3.68 crore loans, equivalent to over 1% of India's GDP. This lending accounted for 8.4% of retail and SME lending by value and 11.8% by volume during the year. Adoption is also expanding to insurance, investments, wealth management, personal finance, and risk assessment.
WLDD, a creator-led content and marketing distribution company founded in 2018, announced that Adfactors PR and Vikas Kemani, founder and CIO of Carnelian Asset Management & Advisors, acquired a stake in the company. WLDD stated that the investment will support the expansion of its technologies, creator ecosystem, content platforms, and brand solutions, as companies increasingly compete for attention, trust, and memorability. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the company also has offices in Mumbai and Delhi. Among its clients are brands such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, OpenAI, Spotify, Netflix, Tata Motors, Philips, Rapido, Tinder, and Audible.
Fintech platform SaveIN reported an 80% year-over-year increase in total income to ₹27.9 crore in FY2025-26, up from ₹15.7 crore in the previous fiscal year. Core operating income grew by 75% to ₹24.1 crore and has increased more than fivefold over the last two fiscal years. During FY2026, the company disbursed loans worth over ₹400 crore and has since increased the annual loan disbursement rate to over ₹700 crore. The company currently has over 8000 retail touchpoints in more than 130 cities and 15,000 postal codes. It has set a goal to achieve an annual disbursement rate of ₹2000 crore within the next 12 months.
TransportOne from Delhivery launched an agent AI workforce for logistics, integrating six specialized AI agents to support transport workflows and operations. The platform is designed to handle day-to-day activities across the entire logistics lifecycle, allowing human teams to maintain oversight and intervene where judgment is required. According to Delhivery, the AI agents can identify and recover freight overpayments through invoice auditing, negotiate with carriers to secure competitive spot rates, and detect potential service level deviations.
Hostinger expanded its AI assistant Kodee to Hostinger Agent—an agent platform combining customer support with specialized capabilities for creation, planning, analysis, and workflow automation. Previously, Kodee independently resolved about 91% of the 1.5 million monthly support conversations. Hostinger Agent can now take actions using the client's website or store, domain, business email, newsletters, and current work. Its specialized agents cover marketing, SEO, content, and visual assets, analysis, and repetitive tasks. When the system is uncertain, it can request help from a human specialist while continuing to learn. Hostinger Agent is also integrated into AI Builder, the company's environment for creating websites, stores, apps, and other online projects. Hostinger stated that the platform aims to unify the digital experience for its more than five million customers.
Physical AI SiMa.ai partnered with ARK Electronics to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation autonomous drones. The companies are launching ARK-SiMa.ai Modalix MLSoC packages, described as production-ready and available.
[ ]
