The Final Echo of 2025
Reflections on first cheques, shared conviction, and the people shaping what comes next.
Congratulations, you made it!
Welcome to our 24th and final newsletter of 2025. Throughout the year, we’ve done our best to introduce you to some of the most important trends and pivotal happenings of the year through Eximius Echo. Before we dive into this edition, we wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for reading every single piece and providing critical feedback that helped shape this endeavour. We look forward to hearing more from you across 2026 and beyond!
In our last edition (check it out if you haven’t), we referred to 2025 as a landmark year. For us at Eximius Ventures, it meant turning a new chapter with the launch of our second fund. While it’s hard to believe that 2021 and the launch of Eximus Fund I are so distant, our deep interactions with founders and operators over the last half a decade have propelled us on our path and fueled our ambition to be the first cheque that India can trust.
As we bring the year to a close, we wanted to talk about what made 2025 special for us. From a slew of exciting investments to marquee events and riveting IPs, here’s a quick snapshot of 2025 from us at Eximius Ventures.
If you’re new here, we’re a Pre-seed VC fund backing bold ideas in FinTech, ConsumerTech, and Enterprise AI. We use this newsletter to share insights, trends, and ideas from the sectors we’re passionate about.
Let’s dive in.
New Investments
Over the course of the year, we evaluated around 11,000 companies, spoke with nearly 2,000 founders, and backed 8 new companies - 6 you’ll meet below, and 2 currently in stealth (more on those early next year!)
Here’s a quick snapshot of the new teams we welcomed to the Eximius Family this year:
a) Triple Tap Games (ConsumerTech)
A studio building hybrid-casual hidden-object games that stay easy to enter while still rewarding progression and narrative depth. Built by a founder with prior exit experience and deep genre intuition, the team brings repeat execution muscle and a precise read on where hybrid-casual is headed next.
b) Decover AI (Enterprise AI)
A legal-tech search engine for e-discovery, research, and knowledge management, building toward full-stack legal intelligence. Founded by operators who’ve built and scaled enterprise search systems before, with a firsthand understanding of where legal workflows break and how to deliver immediate ROI, in demanding markets like the US.
c) Amicco (ConsumerTech)
A vertical marketplace simplifying spare-parts procurement for independent garages.
Built by a founder who has lived the problem end-to-end, bringing operator empathy and on-ground insight to a daily, high-frequency workflow where reliability and speed directly impact livelihoods.
d) DevAssure (Enterprise AI)
An AI-augmented test creation and maintenance suite that automates QA through intelligent agents. Founded by engineers who’ve shipped at scale and felt the pain of brittle testing firsthand, with a clear focus on embedding directly into developer workflows to unlock faster releases without regressions.
e) MyNaksh (f.k.a. AstroCulture) (ConsumerTech)
An AI-driven astrology platform designed for personalised, ongoing insights that compound into deeper user relationships. Led by a consumer-tech founding team that understands both scale and sensitivity, building trust-first experiences in a category where belief, retention, and product depth matter more than transactions.
f) CuePilot (Enterprise AI)
A voice-first, agentic preschool operating system unifying parent communication, teacher workflows, curriculum delivery, and fee collection. Built by founders who have run preschools themselves and engineered ML systems at scale, combining lived operational pain with deep technical capability and early proof across live, renewing centres.
New investments mark beginnings. Follow-on rounds mark something quieter, but deeper: trust that compounds. As we welcomed new founders into Fund II, we also watched several from our earliest chapters step into their next phase of growth.
From First Cheques to Next Chapters
Also worth celebrating: members of the Fund I family - Skydo, STAN, Handpickd, Finarkein, 30 Sundays (among others; yet to be announced) - took meaningful next steps this year by raising follow-on capital.
Skydo raised $10M, with new investor Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital joining the cap table,
STAN raised $10.5M, with new investors Sony Innovation Fund and Hyderabad Angels Fund (HAF VC) joining the cap table,
Handpickd raised $15M, with new investors Bertelsmann India Investments and Titan Capital Winners Fund joining the cap table,
Finarkein raised $1.5M, with new investor DSP Group Family Office joining the cap table,
30 Sundays raised $770K, with new investor InfoEdge Ventures joining the cap table, etc.
Seeing founders we backed early continue to find belief, momentum, and partners along the way reinforces why we do what we do.
Beyond capital, 2025 was also about creating spaces for founders and operators to learn from one another, share context, and build alongside the ecosystem. That intent shaped how we showed up, across the year.
New Community Initiatives
‘Community’ is a key part of our identity. With an ecosystem as young and diverse as India, there is never a shortage of exceptional people to learn from, both for investors and operators. This ethos is reflected across some of the marquee events we conducted in 2025:
a) Gen Alpha: The New Consumers: To dissect Gen Alpha as consumers, we convened an esteemed group of operators across the spectrum to shed light on them, and what they portend for the future.
b) Operator Events: We brought together some of the most stellar operators across the Delhi-NCR and Bangalore ecosystems to create a dedicated forum to connect and share insights.
b) The Gaming Mixer: Organized in partnership with Gamedev India, AWS, Bagrry’s, and Blitz, ‘The Gaming Mixer’ saw over 50 developers from across the Delhi-NCR come together to bond over games and India’s potential as a gaming hub.
c) Cities Connect: We set out on a multi-city journey in partnership with MIXI Global Investments and WeWork Labs, covering Gurgaon, Pune, and Hyderabad to speak with some of the most eminent local stalwarts to decipher future trends and what India’s building.
d) Pitch to a Partner: To bridge the gap between founders and investors, we launched the ‘Pitch to a Partner’ program, where founders could solicit crisp feedback from Pearl Agarwal, our Founder and Managing Partner.
In addition to the above, we collaborated with Nvidia for their Inception Program, which empowers Indian builders to embrace the transformative power of AI, and Microsoft for their Accelerate Together event to discuss the innovations that are redefining the landscape and how to best support founders in this new paradigm.
Stepping Stones
Through all these initiatives, our persistent objective is to be as close to the nucleus of the founder ecosystem. As a testament to this ambition, we are proud to announce the launch of our new office in Bengaluru.
Importantly, we also welcomed new members this year on our path to becoming India’s premier first cheque:
1) Aryan Sinha: Analyst - ConsumerTech
2) Sidhartha Menon: Sr. Analyst - FinTech
3) Anusha Desai: Investor Relations & Capital Formation
4) Neha Mourya: Investor Relations & Capital Formation
5) Jyothi: Executive Assistant
6) Sumanta Sengupta - Advisor
We’re looking forward to you meeting them!
To end the year and this piece, we want to take a moment to talk about what 2025 meant to each of us, what inspires us for 2026, and share some stellar recommendations to satiate your curiosity this holiday season.
Humans of Eximius
Partners
Pearl
What content inspired you in 2025?
Atomic Habits by James Clear was a brilliant read that stayed with me.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
Building meaningful relationships that go beyond one deal or one transaction.
Preeti
What content inspired you in 2025?
Horowitz’s core lesson: leaders don’t get the luxury of certainty. You act anyway, and you own the consequences.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In the next year, I’ll try and invest attention where it better compounds outcomes in all aspects - work and otherwise.
Investments Team
Shubham
What content inspired you in 2025?
3blue1brown and Veritasium kept the curious child scientist in me alive.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
Travelling farther, reading wider, and continuing to develop as a person.
Laksh
What content inspired you in 2025?
The Outsider by Albert Camus was a great read. I was also moved by the poetry of Faiz, Ghalib, Firaq, and Iqbal. The last of these I hope to read more of in the next year, in particular.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
Giving back to founders and operators. I want to help them in reaching their goals and getting to the next level. On a personal note, I want to resuscitate my passion for writing and finally finish The Witcher 3.
Keshav
What content inspired you in 2025?
The Compound Effect and The Prophet shaped much of my thinking this year.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In 2026, I’m looking forward to more travel, stronger outcomes at work, and steady progress toward a healthier, fitter me.
Sidhartha
What content inspired you in 2025?
Two books that shaped me were “The Almanack of Charlie Munger” for its mental models and “Letters from a Stoic” for its timeless guidance on living well.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
I want to strengthen my network while getting fitter and staying consistent with reading. I also want to finally start my vinyl record collection.
Aryan
What content inspired you in 2025?
As a huge fan of podcasts, I kept returning to ‘Acquired’ and ‘Founders’ to sharpen my understanding of markets and long-term value creation.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In 2026, the focus is to deepen early founder relationships and build stronger conviction around emerging consumer trends.
Platforms Team
Neha
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In 2026, I’m aiming for PRs across the board - in the gym and in the boardroom.
Lokesh
What content inspired you in 2025?
The Knowledge Project podcast shaped much of my thinking this year.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In 2026, I’m excited to take on bigger challenges at work, travel to new places, and play more sports.
Aastha
What content inspired you in 2025?
I am referring to my life as a piece of content here, tbh :P - My biggest takeaway was realising that action beats waiting every single time: decisive action always supersedes passivity.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
In 2026, I want to bring focus back to personal capital: fuelling my body, mind & soul.
Anusha
What content inspired you in 2025?
“Trust” by Francis Fukuyama consistently informed how I thought about long-term partnerships, credibility, and institutional relationships.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
I’m excited to develop stronger proprietary insights, elevate our LP engagement, and play a more proactive role in fundraising strategy and fund storytelling.
Tanishk
What content inspired you in 2025?
Superman; all the symbolism behind who he is, of course, but more importantly, the fact that James Gunn restarted the DC Universe. A fresh start is always on the cards.
What are you looking forward to in 2026?
To be more present every day. Time’s passing by too fast, and that’s something that I’ve not been able to synthesise yet.
Before the Next Chapter
As this year draws to a close, we’re reminded that while capital and content shape how we show up, it’s the people and the conversations that give our work meaning. Eximius Echo began as a simple attempt to make sense of an increasingly noisy ecosystem, to slow things down, add context, and create space for honest reflection at the very earliest stages of building.
In 2025, that intent deepened. Through The Backstage Pass and our broader writing, we tried to spotlight founders not just for what they built, but for the questions they asked, the trade-offs they made, and the resilience it took to keep going.
To all our readers, we hope the days ahead bring you rest, warmth, and time with the people who matter most.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas, a joyful New Year, and a peaceful holiday season.
We’ll see you in 2026.
- Team Eximius Ventures