In a thunderous validation of India’s AI prowess, Rocket, the audacious Surat-based startup reimagining app development through natural language wizardry, has rocketed to new heights with a whopping $15 million seed funding round. Led by the formidable Salesforce Ventures and co-piloted by Accel and Together Fund, this all-equity infusion catapults Rocket into the global arena, arming it to transform fleeting ideas into scalable, production-ready applications at the speed of thought. As an Indian journalist who’s chronicled the highs and heartbreaks of the startup ecosystem for 15 years, I’ve seen my share of hype fizzle out. But Rocket? This isn’t vaporware; it’s a seismic shift, democratizing coding for the masses and positioning India as the undisputed forge of AI innovation.
Founded in the unlikeliest of tech cradles – the diamond-polishing hub of Surat – by the battle-tested trio of Vishal Virani, Rahul Shingala, and Deepak Dhanak, Rocket emerged from the ashes of their previous venture, DhiWise, a low-code platform that honed their chops in streamlining developer workflows. Rebranded and reborn earlier this year as Rocket.new, the platform ditches the drudgery of traditional coding for “vibe-coding” – a cheeky term for turning casual prompts like “Build me a dashboard for tracking e-commerce sales with real-time analytics” into fully functional, multi-page apps in minutes. No more wrestling with syntax errors or endless debugging; Rocket’s proprietary AI engine handles the heavy lifting, from backend logic to frontend polish, ensuring outputs are enterprise-grade and deployment-ready.
The numbers tell a story of explosive alchemy. Launched in beta just four months ago in June, Rocket has already ensnared over 400,000 users across 180 countries, with the US spearheading adoption at 26% of revenue, trailed by Europe (15-20%) and India (10%). Over 500,000 production-ready apps have been birthed on the platform – think internal tools for Fortune 100 behemoths, agile dashboards for nimble startups, and consumer-facing whizzes for agencies – generating a blistering $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). With 10,000 paid subscribers hooked on plans starting at $25/month (after a generous free tier with 1 million tokens), Rocket’s gross margins hover at a healthy 50-55%, with ambitions to rocket them to 60-70% through scale. “We’ve bridged the chasm between AI’s promise and production reality,” beams Virani, Rocket’s CEO, in an exclusive interview with The Economic Herald. “Our users aren’t hobbyists; they’re builders turning visions into ventures.”
This funding bonanza, first whispered by Entrackr earlier this month, underscores a pivotal pivot for Rocket. The $15 million war chest – translating to roughly Rs 126 crore at current rates – will turbocharge research and development, fine-tuning proprietary models to tackle thornier enterprise challenges like secure integrations and custom scalability. Expect accelerated rollouts of version 0.4, which promises even deeper natural language comprehension and multi-modal inputs (hello, voice and sketch-based prompts). But the real thrust? Global conquest. Rocket is planting its North American flag with a gleaming headquarters in Palo Alto, California – the Silicon Valley heartbeat – to woo its Yankee fanbase and forge partnerships with cloud giants. Back home in Surat, the 60-strong team (split evenly between the two outposts) plans to double its engineering and product muscle over the next 12-15 months, funneling talent into AI R&D and go-to-market blitzes.
Kartik Gupta, the sharp-eyed investor at Salesforce Ventures, didn’t mince words in his endorsement: “Rocket’s platform is the next evolutionary leap for developer tools. They’ve shifted from merely writing code faster to translating ideas into complete, production-grade solutions – democratizing software creation and upending the economics of building businesses.” Accel’s backing, a nod to their storied bets on Flipkart and Swiggy, signals unshakeable faith in Rocket’s moat: while rivals like Cursor, Bolt, or Lovable peddle prototypes, Rocket delivers end-to-end firepower, slashing development cycles by up to 10x and empowering non-coders – from solopreneurs in Mumbai’s co-working cafes to marketing whizzes in New York’s ad agencies.
Zooming out, Rocket’s ascent is a microcosm of India’s AI supernova. The nation, already the world’s third-largest startup hub with over 100 unicorns, is witnessing a deluge of AI investments – $8.2 billion in 2024 alone, per Tracxn data, with 2025 on track to shatter records. From Bengaluru’s behemoths like Krutrim to Tier-2 trailblazers like Surat’s Rocket, the narrative is flipping: bootstrapped outfits from “non-metro” outposts are snagging blue-chip VCs, proving geography is no barrier in the cloud era. Together Fund’s participation, helmed by Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, adds a layer of homegrown heft, blending global ambition with desi ingenuity. “This round isn’t just capital; it’s a launchpad for India’s voice in the global AI symphony,” adds Shingala, whose prior DhiWise stint bootstrapped to $9.5 million in pre-seed from the likes of India Quotient and Dholakia Ventures.
Yet, no rocket ride is turbulence-free. The AI arms race is ferocious, with incumbents like GitHub Copilot and no-code darlings like Bubble circling. Data privacy jitters loom large, especially with GDPR and India’s DPDP Act tightening the screws, demanding Rocket fortify its models against biases and breaches. Token economics, while scalable, could face pushback if compute costs spike amid the GPU crunch. And in a market where 70% of AI pilots fizzle (Gartner stats), Rocket must prove sustained stickiness beyond the honeymoon phase. Still, early traction with enterprises – powering healthcare trackers and e-commerce engines – hints at a defensible fortress.
For the Indian developer, long shackled by legacy tools and talent shortages, Rocket is a liberator. Imagine a 25-year-old freelancer in Lucknow conjuring a SaaS prototype over chai, or a Delhi startup iterating MVPs without burning lakhs on offshore devs. This is the promise: inclusivity at warp speed, where ideas, not infrastructure, dictate destiny. As India hurtles toward a $1 trillion digital economy by 2030, per NITI Aayog, platforms like Rocket are the accelerants, igniting a builder boom that could spawn the next Zoho or Freshworks.
In the end, this $15 million isn’t mere moolah; it’s momentum. With Palo Alto as its co-pilot and Surat as its soul, Rocket is primed to orbit the world, proving once more that India’s startups don’t just play the game – they redefine it. Buckle up; the vibe-coding era has just ignited.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, September 24, 2025 10:52 am by Startup Chronicle Team
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