AI Startups To Watch: 5 Startups That Caught Our Eye In June

by · Inc42

SUMMARY

  • As AI reshapes industries, founders are increasingly building AI-native systems designed for production-grade deployment and real-world execution
  • The ninth edition of Inc42’s AI Startups To Watch highlights emerging Indian AI startups building across tutoring, agentic cybersecurity and workflow automation
  • From multimodal marketing agents to autonomous SecOps systems, these startups are betting on AI becoming an operational layer rather than just a productivity tool
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India’s tech story is entering a nuanced phase, with AI pushing deeper into filmmaking, cybersecurity, enterprise workflows and education. Recently, AI-native studio Studio Blo teamed up with filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani on a branded film for Bajaj Group, using AI for facial cloning, voice recreation and visual storytelling. In enterprise India, the momentum was just as visible. Rapido disclosed that nearly two-thirds of its coding workflows are now AI-assisted.

Meanwhile, startups building infrastructure for enterprise automation, cybersecurity orchestration and AI-native operations continue to attract investor and enterprise attention.

But the excitement is now being matched by scrutiny. GitHub’s pivot to usage-based Copilot pricing has sparked fresh concerns about rising enterprise AI costs, as many companies reassess how expensive frontier model adoption could become at scale. The question is no longer whether AI can be embedded into more workflows, but how economically durable those deployments will be once the bill comes due.

Yet, founders are building aggressively with the belief that AI will evolve from a productivity layer into an execution layer, which will increasingly run tasks, systems and decisions across industries. This belief continues to fuel a new generation of startups building the infrastructure, tools and applications needed to make AI operational.