Mukund Jha, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Dunzo, is reportedly in discussions to secure a significant fundraise for his new generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) startup. According to sources familiar with the matter, Jha is aiming to raise between Rs 50-80 crore (approximately $6-10 million) from Together Fund.
The news comes just months after Moneycontrol reported Jha’s departure from the cash-strapped hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo in October 2023. This funding round is happening amid a trend where several top executives from various startups are venturing out to establish their own companies, a shift that appeals to both operators and investors. “Experienced leaders are much better off having a considerable stake in their own company, rather than being a small stakeholder in a larger startup which has peaked,” Moneycontrol noted earlier.
Jha’s new venture focuses on leveraging Gen AI to automate quality assurance (QA) processes, which are crucial for businesses to ensure their final products meet quality standards. “Jha is building a generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) company and also wants to automate a lot of the quality assurance (QA) that companies do – think of it like an overlap of AI and SaaS,” one of the sources said.
QA checks involve creating and running tests, recognizing errors, and providing feedback to ensure products meet a company’s quality requirements.
Jha has also reportedly engaged with Y Combinator, though it is currently unclear if those talks will proceed. Neither Mukund Jha nor Together Fund responded to Moneycontrol’s queries on the matter.
Mukund Jha has an extensive background in technology and entrepreneurship. He co-founded Dunzo in 2015 and stayed with the company until 2023. Prior to Dunzo, he worked at Google in New York and founded two startups: Wisdom.ly, a group video platform for virtual meetups and conferences, and Habet, an intelligent goal-tracking platform.
This fundraising effort comes at a critical time for Dunzo, which is also attempting to raise funds to sustain its operations amidst dwindling business.
Together Fund, established in 2021 by Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, Manav Garg, founder and CEO of Eka Software, and Shubham Gupta, previously at Matrix Partners India, has quickly become a significant player in the investment landscape. The fund raised $85 million in its first round and expanded to a total corpus of $150 million in its second fund announced in 2023.
Together Fund has a diverse portfolio, having invested in over 20 companies spanning horizontal SaaS applications such as recruitment, sales intelligence, and marketing, as well as vertical SaaS companies in healthcare and emerging categories like cloud for connected devices. Some of its notable portfolio firms include DhiWise, SpendFlo, SecureDen, and TopLyne.
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