Indian vibe-coding startup secures seed round from Salesforce Ventures and Accel to scale its AI-powered app development platform

Rocket.new, one of India’s most promising AI app development startups, has raised $15 million in seed funding led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Accel and Together Fund. The 16-week-old startup is making waves in the fast-growing vibe-coding space by helping users build full, production-ready apps directly from natural-language prompts.

Since its beta launch in June, Rocket.new has already gained more than 400,000 users across 180 countries, including over 10,000 paid subscribers. The company has hit $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and is aiming to reach $20–25 million by year’s end and $60–70 million by mid-2026, according to co-founder and CEO Vishal Virani.

From Surat to Silicon Valley Ambitions

Based in Surat, a city better known for textiles and diamonds than tech startups, Virani launched Rocket.new with Rahul Shingala and Deepak Dhanak. The startup is a pivot from their earlier venture, DhiWise, which focused on developer workflows.

“We are building the first vibe solution platform, not just for day-one problems but for day-two challenges,” Virani told TechCrunch.

Rocket.new’s agentic AI system is designed to do more than generate source code. It helps companies conduct competitive research, product development, and scaling—essentially replacing some of the functions of product managers.

Early Growth and Global Reach

Rocket.new’s platform has already been used to build over half a million applications, with strong adoption from solopreneurs, product managers, and developers. Notably, users from Meta, PayPal, KPMG, PwC, and Times Internet are among its early adopters.

The startup says 80% of its users build “serious” applications, ranging from e-commerce platforms to fintech tools, B2B software, and mental health apps. Around 45% focus on mobile apps while 55% build websites. Many creators use Rocket.new to convert prototypes built on Lovable or Replit into native mobile apps with backend integration.

AI Tech, Business Model, and Market Strategy

Rocket.new integrates large models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google’s Gemini with its own proprietary systems trained on DhiWise datasets. Unlike rivals, its deeper architecture focuses on production readiness, even if the initial build takes longer (about 25 minutes).

The platform runs on a subscription model, starting at $25 per month, with gross margins of 50–55%, which the team aims to push to 70%. To expand globally, Rocket.new is opening a U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto, with the U.S. already contributing 26% of revenue, followed by Europe and India.

Backing and the Road Ahead

“Rocket.new is solving the gap between the magic of AI code generation and the reality of making that code production-ready,” said Kartik Gupta of Salesforce Ventures.

With fresh funding, Rocket.new plans to double its engineering team, sharpen its go-to-market strategy, and invest heavily in R&D and proprietary AI models.

For a startup just 16 weeks old, Rocket.new’s rapid growth signals that India is ready to play a leading role in AI-driven app development.