Cars24 launches Deployment Inc with $5m to build enterprise AI systems

MUMBAI: AI is getting a new deployment strategy. Cars24 has launched Deployment Inc, an independent enterprise AI company that will embed engineers within customer teams to help businesses build, deploy and operate AI systems across critical workflows.

Cars24 is investing an initial $5 million in the venture and will also become its first customer. Deployment Inc will operate independently and serve enterprises across sectors including financial services, consumer businesses, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and technology.

The company’s pitch is aimed at a familiar enterprise problem. AI projects often involve strategy consultants, model providers, software vendors, systems integrators and internal engineering teams, with responsibility split across multiple parties. Deployment Inc wants to put one team in charge of the outcome.

Its model is built around forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) who will work from inside customer organisations. They will start with a specific business workflow and an agreed metric, connect AI models to the company’s existing data and systems, deploy the workflow on live operations and remain involved until it works reliably at scale.

The venture has been developed from the AI operating model built inside Cars24. AI agents at the company now handle more than one million minutes of customer conversations each month. Service-request turnaround time has fallen from 32 hours to 30 minutes, while inspection time has been halved across more than 100,000 monthly inspections.

The same engineering team is also producing three times more output, while more than 45 AI agents operate across customer support, sales, financing, inspections, payments and internal operations.

Cars24 will continue using Deployment Inc as it expands AI across its own operations. The experience and systems developed through this work will also give the new company a live production environment before it takes on additional customers.

“Every enterprise will soon have access to powerful AI models. The scarce capability will be knowing how to turn them into systems that customers and employees can depend on,” said Cars24 founder Vikram Chopra.

He added that Jayesh Gupta and his team had built this capability inside Cars24 in workflows where outcomes could not be hidden, while Aayush Gupta brings the research expertise needed to keep the execution at the frontier.

Deployment Inc is co-founded by Jayesh Gupta, who built and leads AI, scientific research and innovation at Cars24, and Aayush Gupta, an AI researcher and engineer whose experience includes xAI, Zomato, Atlassian and Disney+ Hotstar.

“Every new model resets what is possible. It should not force an enterprise to reset its AI strategy,” said Deployment Inc co-founder Jayesh Gupta. “Our FDEs will work inside the business, against real constraints, and own the outcome. The product is not the agent. The product is the changed operation.”

For each engagement, Deployment Inc will identify a high-value workflow and establish a baseline across measures such as time, cost, accuracy, conversion or customer experience. Its engineers will then build and integrate the AI-led workflow, operate it alongside the existing process and measure the results.

Human oversight will remain in place for important decisions, exceptions and escalations.

Deployment Inc has also been recognised as an OpenAI Select Partner for enterprise deployments. It will combine OpenAI’s AI capabilities with its own engineering and implementation expertise to build production AI systems for customers.

The company plans to hire 50 engineers this month, primarily FDEs, along with professionals in AI strategy and go-to-market roles. It is also opening its first engagements to enterprises looking to redesign critical operations around AI.

Cars24 will serve as Deployment 001, while applications for Deployment 002 are now open. The message is clear: the next AI race may not be about who has the smartest model, but who can make it work where the business actually happens.