Digital
hypergro.ai secures Rs seven crore funding: Leading the charge in AI-driven digital marketing revolution
Mumbai: hypergro.ai, a Bangalore- based martech startup, focused on boosting brand revenues and dramatically reducing customer acquisition costs, has announced that it has raised seed funding of Rs seven crore. The round was led by Silverneedle Ventures with participation from Huddle, TDV Partners, HME Ventures, Dholakia Ventures, FiiRE, & prominent angel investors like Arjun Vaidya, Ankit Kedia and Rajesh Sawhney.
In the current digital landscape, rising Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are eating up large parts of budgets without delivering expected returns. This problem is made worse by poor Return on Ad Spend (ROAS); even with huge investments in various ads. This combination of challenges has brands stuck in a cycle of high spending with low results, making steady growth hard to achieve.
With hypergro.ai, brands can reverse this trend by using its state-of-the-art platform that harnesses the raw power of user-generated content (UGC) and couples it with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. This revolutionary synergy not only simplifies the customer acquisition trajectory but also offers brands a potent tool that’s both cost-effective and resonant with modern audiences.
On the fundraising, Silverneedle Ventures partner Prashant Panday said, “Hypergro.ai attacks the biggest challenge facing consumer marketing companies – rising CACs. We at Silverneedle Ventures believe strongly in the power of technology in general and AI in particular. We are proud to lead this round and repose confidence in the dynamic founders of the company.”
The startup was founded in the year 2022 by Rituraj Biswas (CEO), Neha Soman (CBO), Abhijeet Kumar (CTO), and Arijit Mukhopadhyay (CPTO). With roots embedded in platforms like ShareChat and Glance, their collective insight into the digital domain is profound. Biswasj spearheads the product, focusing on innovation and keeping our solutions fresh and ahead of the competition. Kumar, hailing from IIT Roorkee, and Mukhopadhyay, a proud product of IIT Delhi, together constitute the tech-driven backbone. Meanwhile, Soman, leveraging her vast marketing expertise and hands-on experience as a YouTube creator, infuses the team with a distinct content-centric insight.
“At hypergro, we’re not merely witnessing the future – we’re crafting it. By merging the power of AI with the authenticity of UGC, we’re redefining the dynamics of business-customer interactions. Our mission is to make this groundbreaking shift both transformational and available to everyone,” stated Biswas.
A substantial slice of this financial boost will be channeled to hypergro’s core – its AI capabilities. This encompasses in-depth data exploration, refining predictive algorithms, and polishing automation to offer clients unparalleled results. As hypergro scales its operations, it will need to expand its teams. The funds will be used to attract top talents in areas such as AI and machine learning, tech, product, sales and marketing. Moreover, the company is setting its sights on new markets and is poised to make its innovative solutions accessible to a broader spectrum of businesses.
With businesses steadily gravitating online, they are poised to cater to a booming market, predicted to soar to an astronomical $3.1 billion by 2024 in India alone. Nestled at the pivotal crossroads of digital advertising and UGC, hypergro is the torchbearer in these swift-scaling sectors.
Digital
Ethical AI must benefit society, not dominate it, says WFEB chief Sanjay Pradhan at IAA event
At Mumbai event, ethics expert urges businesses and governments to shape AI responsibly
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence may be racing ahead at lightning speed, but its direction must still be guided by human conscience. That was the central message delivered by Sanjay Pradhan, president of the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB), during the latest edition of IAA Conversations held in Mumbai.
The session was organised by the International Advertising Association (IAA) and the Artificial Intelligence Association of India (AIAI) in association with The Free Press Journal at the Free Press House on 7 March. Addressing a packed audience, Pradhan called for stronger ethical leadership to ensure AI remains a tool that benefits humanity rather than one that governs it.
“Artificial intelligence has rapidly become one of the most powerful technologies humanity has created,” Pradhan said. “It is unlocking breakthroughs in medicine, science and creativity at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago.”
But he warned that the same technology carries serious risks. AI, he noted, can amplify disinformation faster than facts can travel, compromise privacy, deepen discrimination and disrupt millions of livelihoods. Referencing concerns raised by AI pioneers such as Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI, Pradhan stressed that the real challenge is not whether AI will shape the world, but whether humans will shape it with ethics and wisdom.
Structuring his talk around four guiding questions, why, what, how and who, Pradhan introduced the audience to WFEB’s emerging AI Ethics Partnership, a global platform aimed at advancing responsible artificial intelligence. He outlined four priority concerns that demand urgent attention: disinformation, bias and discrimination, data privacy and job security.
To make the idea of ethical AI easier to grasp, Pradhan offered a simple metaphor. Ethical AI, he said, is like a three layered cake. The outer layer represents the visible value ethical AI creates for businesses and society. The middle layer is organisational culture that moves ethics from written codes to everyday practice. The innermost layer, however, is the most crucial, the conscience of individual leaders.
Drawing from Indian philosophical thought through WFEB co-founder Ravi Shankar, Pradhan noted that while artificial intelligence can reproduce stored knowledge, true intelligence is boundless and rooted in conscience, creativity and compassion. Practices such as breathwork and meditation, he suggested, can help leaders develop the calm clarity needed for ethical decision making.
The event also featured a discussion with Maninder Adityaraj Singh, chief of staff and head of innovation at Rediffusion Brand Solutions Pvt Ltd, and Yash Johri, lawyer, Supreme Court of India.
Opening the session, IAA India chapter president Abhishek Karnani, highlighted the need for industries to understand and engage with AI responsibly.
“AI has to be befriended and understood,” added Rediffusion managing director and AIAI national convenor Sandeep Goyal. “Its ethical use will determine whether it becomes a friend or a foe.”
As AI continues to reshape industries and societies, Pradhan ended with a simple but powerful call to action. Businesses, governments and individuals must work together to ensure that the algorithms shaping the future reflect human values rather than just cold logic.
