Kily Raises ₹30 Crore Seed Round to Build the AI Infrastructure Powering the Future of Enterprise Commerce

Bengaluru: Artificial intelligence is steadily moving beyond chatbots and content generation into enterprise workflows, and investors are increasingly backing startups building industry-specific AI solutions. Joining this growing wave is Kily, an AI-native commerce startup that has raised ₹30 crore (approximately $3.5 million) in seed funding in a round led by Sorin Investments, with participation from Razorpay and Wyser.

The funding will help the company accelerate product development, expand its engineering and AI capabilities, and scale enterprise deployments as businesses increasingly look for intelligent automation across commerce operations.

The announcement represents more than just another funding milestone—it reflects growing investor conviction that vertical AI applications, rather than generic AI tools, will define the next phase of enterprise software.

A Startup Born from Years of Industry Experience

Kily’s founding story is rooted in years of experience building large-scale digital businesses rather than a sudden AI trend.

One of the founders spent years helping scale Affle’s business before leading the development of Flipkart Ads, where he witnessed first-hand how retail media and commerce technology were evolving. During that time, he remained largely absent from social media, choosing instead to focus on building products and businesses. The funding announcement marked his first public LinkedIn post, underscoring the significance of the milestone.

The company itself emerged from years of discussions with co-founder Anurag, who had been exploring how AI agents could fundamentally transform enterprise operations. Those conversations eventually intersected with deep expertise in retail advertising and commerce technology, leading both founders to conclude that the existing commerce ecosystem would eventually require AI-native infrastructure rather than incremental software improvements.

Sharad Chitlangia later joined the venture, completing the founding team and bringing additional technical and product leadership as Kily began building its platform.

Reimagining Commerce Through AI Agents

Unlike conventional enterprise software that requires users to manually analyse dashboards, configure campaigns, or execute repetitive operational tasks, Kily is developing AI agents capable of assisting businesses across multiple commerce workflows.

The company is positioning itself at the intersection of artificial intelligence, retail media, marketing automation, and enterprise commerce—an area increasingly attracting global attention as organisations seek higher productivity without proportionally increasing headcount.

Industry analysts believe the next generation of enterprise software will be defined less by interfaces and more by autonomous AI systems capable of interpreting business data, making recommendations, and executing routine operational decisions. This shift has created significant opportunities for startups building specialised AI solutions tailored to specific industries instead of broad consumer applications.

Enterprise Adoption Signals Strong Product-Market Validation

One of the strongest indicators of Kily’s early momentum is the calibre of organisations already working with the startup.

The company revealed that ITC became its first enterprise customer, while WPP, one of the world’s largest marketing and communications groups, joined as its first agency partner. Beyond these early relationships, several enterprise brands have reportedly entrusted Kily with solving meaningful operational and commerce-related challenges.

For a seed-stage startup, attracting established enterprise customers serves as a significant validation of both the product and the market opportunity. Enterprise AI buyers today are increasingly focused on measurable business outcomes rather than experimental technology demonstrations, making early commercial traction an important differentiator.

Why Investors Are Betting on Vertical AI

The participation of Sorin Investments, Razorpay, and Wyser highlights a broader investment trend unfolding across India’s startup ecosystem.

Over the past two years, venture capital firms have shifted their attention from general-purpose AI platforms to startups solving highly specific enterprise problems. Investors are increasingly looking for companies that combine proprietary technology with deep domain expertise, particularly in sectors where AI can deliver immediate productivity gains.

Commerce represents one such sector. Retailers today manage complex operations involving inventory planning, digital advertising, pricing, customer acquisition, marketplace management, and omnichannel experiences. AI-powered automation has the potential to simplify these functions while reducing operational costs and improving decision-making.

From an investor’s perspective, startups operating in this space benefit from multiple structural advantages: recurring SaaS revenue models, long-term enterprise contracts, high switching costs, and expanding demand driven by digital transformation initiatives. Companies capable of embedding AI directly into enterprise workflows are therefore viewed as having stronger long-term defensibility than businesses offering standalone AI tools.

India’s Enterprise AI Ecosystem Is Entering a New Phase

India has rapidly emerged as one of the fastest-growing AI startup ecosystems, but the market is now entering a more mature phase. Rather than competing to build foundational large language models, an increasing number of startups are focusing on applying AI to solve practical business challenges across industries such as retail, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and customer support.

Enterprise customers are no longer asking whether they should adopt AI—they are asking where AI can generate measurable returns. This shift is creating demand for specialised platforms that integrate seamlessly into existing business operations while delivering quantifiable improvements in efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

The growing availability of enterprise-grade AI infrastructure, combined with widespread cloud adoption and increasing digital commerce activity, has created favourable conditions for startups like Kily to scale.

Funding Reflects Confidence in the Future of AI Commerce

While ₹30 crore is a modest seed round by global standards, the quality of the investors and the company’s early enterprise traction make the announcement noteworthy within India’s rapidly evolving AI ecosystem.

The combination of experienced founders, recognised enterprise customers, strategic investors, and a clearly defined market problem positions Kily among the new generation of startups seeking to build AI infrastructure for businesses rather than consumer applications.

As enterprises continue investing in automation and intelligent decision-making, AI-native commerce platforms are expected to become an increasingly important part of digital business infrastructure. Kily’s latest funding round signals that investors believe the future of commerce will be shaped not only by digital platforms but also by autonomous AI systems capable of operating alongside human teams.

With fresh capital in hand, Kily now faces the challenge of translating early market validation into scalable enterprise growth. If successful, the startup could become part of a broader wave of Indian AI companies building globally relevant enterprise technology while redefining how commerce businesses operate in the AI era.