For most people, ChatGPT has become a common tool for everything from writing emails to searching for information. But Pune-based deeptech startup, VaayuShop AI, is taking artificial intelligence (AI) far beyond simple conversations. It is building advanced “AI co-workers” for the cleantech and fintech industries.
Founder Atul Mehra completed his master’s in computer applications and worked in Germany with companies associated with advanced driverless car technology. While there, he experienced what AI and driverless cars could do on Germany’s autobahns, and he was fascinated. And behind this ‘marvel’ is the power of artificial intelligence. Says Atul, “I kept thinking — if AI can understand the environment around a car and take decisions in real time, imagine the kind of fundamental shift it can bring across businesses and industries.”This is when Atul decided that it’s time to come back to India to build new AI systems from India for the world. He and his brother Achal, a BTech in computer science, who was earlier in the US, started messaging people on social media apps who had startup ideas that matched their own. They helped these people, thinking this would help them get partners for their own startup, or they would join someone with a startup idea.
The beginning
Says Atul, “One such stranger offered to invest in our company and introduced multiple more investors. In those days, the banks in the US had adopted a zero per cent interest on deposits, so people were looking for other avenues to invest their money instead of it idling in the bank.”
Atul and Achal started building systems where investors and lenders could make decisions using AI. In 2022, they set up VaayuShop AI to help banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFC) find companies where lending risk was low. At that time, they felt that companies could benefit vastly by employing AI co-workers.
Using AI as a powerful tool
Atul says, “In companies across the world, a quiet shift is underway. AI is now evolving into something far more powerful: a system that is capable of reasoning, decision-making and even action. They tied up with NBFCs to disburse loans to small retailers 100% digitally. While they also showed advanced AI co-workers to large multinational banks and automotive companies, whose dealers needed loans. Such automotive companies may need 100s of crores from a single bank.”
“This new frontier is called agentic AI, reasoning and decisioning infra—and it has the potential to transform how businesses operate by creating the digital equivalent of human employees. Most businesses today are familiar with ChatGPT. And while this is useful, it has its own limitations, such as they are capable of giving generic responses that are not necessarily tailored to a specific business. They are non-quantifiable, so unable to predict financial outcomes precisely. Neither can reason nor decide among multiple options and paths within business constraints. And lastly, they are not connected to the internal systems of a company, and they rely largely on data that’s on the internet. And then there is a danger to that as well, since content that gets more views often gets more weightage – even if it is incorrect. “And use of such content is not necessarily good for business as it can be misleading” says Atul. And this is where our AI co-worker will step in.
How AI co-workers work
These AI “co-workers” can do almost anything. According to Atul, they are capable of taking up a goal like ‘increase my business profit by 15%’. If given such a task, the AI co-worker will break it down into a marketing strategy, hiring needs, logistics planning and financial projections. They can even simulate outcomes, providing you with a Plan A that can give you ₹25 crore revenue and a Plan B that can give you ₹30 crore. Data in companies sits in silos. “What our solution does is create a single intelligent system.”
Atul continues, “In most companies, the marketing data sits alone in one system, finance in another, sales insights are elsewhere, and human teams manually connect these dots often slowly and imperfectly. Such fragmentation of data leads to one of the biggest inefficiencies. Our AI co-worker changes all this by integrating all the diverse systems by pulling real-time data and helping a company make cross-functional decisions instantly.” The brothers partnered with NBFCs and a few renowned banks to disburse loans to small retailers, developed AI reasoning systems not known in 2022-23, coding at 4am and disbursing loans during working hours. In the meantime, they participated in the IDFC Leap to Unicorn Challenge and were selected as the top 100 startups and later featured in the Forbes India Top 100 startup list. In 2023 filed a patent for a lending rate negotiator using multi-AI agents. In 2024, they launched AI Co-workers. The AI Co-worker had 23,000 car buyers interacting with AI in a short period.
Building AI co-worker
Atul explains what it took for him to create this solution. “My brother and I studied advanced AI and tech systems and worked all day and night. He in the US and me in Germany doing the coding, identifying data, doing trials, building architectures. All based on real-life experience and interactions over the internet with strangers. In two weeks, we had our first proof-of-concept ready.” While it was just the two of them at the beginning, they now have a team of seven working for them.
Market realities
Initially, we started with the electric vehicle (EV) sector. He gives the example of a customer who was looking to buy an EV. He was 6’ tall and wanted to know which EV would be best suited for him in his budget. A human may have taken a few hours to check the catalogue or check with their supervisor. While our AI co-worker, we gave him the answer in a matter of seconds. So, we began offering our Kavya (the name of the AI-co-worker) to dealers and manufacturers for a price of ₹2 lakhs per annum.”
Initially, they had just three such customers and needed traction to get going. Says Atul, “We realised that we needed more business to be sustainable, yet be narrowly focused to be specialised. So, we expanded to adjacent industries-solar, sustainable e-commerce and cleantech. We also went back with 20% focus on finance, as this sector has a big use of AI. About 80% of our business comes from the cleantech sector.”
Funding
Up until now, they have utilised ₹2.13 crore in three pre-seed rounds. This has come from angels, which includes patent holders, senior professionals, NRIs and startup founders in India, the US, New Zealand and Germany.
Competition
We are ranked 237 among 1,300 companies in our category worldwide according to a prestigious companies ranking portal (Trcxndata). If you take specific categories like small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), EV, solar, banking, we focus – we may rank even better and are well on track to be category winners. To name a few competitors or overlaps, we have competitors like Ailylabs from Munich and Accrete AI in New York. These have raised about $100m each. Adjacent but not direct competition are Salesforce Agentforce and Palantir. Our unique selling proposition (USP) is a specific layer of decision and reasoning infrastructure.
We use the strategy of “Beach Head” that was used by the armed forces. In WWII, forces would land on a beach island or place and then expand the attack. For us, that beachhead is the cleantech market. Market size for cleantech AI systems worldwide is projected to $120B by 2030. We plan to do cleantech and then pick up all that is around it.”
Future plans
They plan to raise ₹18 crore to set up a team in San Jose, US. Says Atul, “From there we will enter the US market, set up in San Jose and then expand our team in India. Post that, we will target Europe and SEA in two to three years. Many of our current investors and well-wishers refer us to venture capital (VC) in India and abroad.”
“We are also trying to build a Focused Research Organisation (FRO) just like AI4Bharat was for Sarvam and what OpenAI was in its early non-profit days. This aligns with the Government of India’s push for Deeptech via Research, development, and innovation (RDI) fund and the Indian Deeptech Alliance by VCs. This FRO will institutionalise the core AI Innovation from India in many ways.” Get ready for this intelligent new future!
