Two Indian teenage founders raise $1.3 million for Y Combinator-backed AI startup
Two young Indian entrepreneurs, Naman Bansal and Shreyans Jain, have raised $1.3 million in seed funding for their San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, Manicule. The funding round was co-led Y Combinator and Broom Ventures, with participation from angel investors.Two Indian entrepreneurs secured $1.3 million in funding for their AI startup, backed Y Combinator. (LinkedIn/Shreyans Jain)(Also read: Sarvam AI co-founder warns India risks becoming a ‘digital colony’ over dependence on foreign AI)According to a Grit Daily report published on October 27, the startup aims to change how software companies reach customers helping AI platforms discover, recommend and use their products.From Agra to Silicon ValleyBansal, Manicule’s co-founder and CEO, grew up in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. He began working with international technology companies at 13, gaining experience in developer relations, technical content and software dribution.Over the next five years, he worked in technical marketing and built an earlier startup. His experience helped him identify how AI-powered tools were changing the way developers discovered software.“The fundamental unit of software discovery has shifted from the Google search query to the AI prompt,” Bansal said.“Passive tracking dashboards don’t bring in customers. We handle the execution end-to-end so AI models don’t just mention our clients; they are chosen and used.”Shreyans Jain began coding at 14Jain, Manicule’s co-founder and chief technology officer, started programming at 14 and chose to pursue a career in technology instead of attending university.He previously worked as a founding engineer at Supermemory, where he helped develop its consumer application and scale its Model Context Protocol server to more than 100,000 users, according to the report.(Also read:
