Three notable deals defined India's startup funding scene on 10 August 2026, spanning food-tech, deeptech venture capital, and enterprise AI. Bakingo's ₹100 crore Series B from Faering Capital headlines the day, coming alongside AUM Ventures' first close of its ₹750 crore deeptech Fund II at ₹225 crore. On the news front, Cars24 launched an independent enterprise AI company called Deployment Inc with a $5 million seed cheque, while Zostel's long-running legal tussle with OYO took a fresh turn at the Delhi High Court. Bakingo is a Gurugram-based online bakery founded in 2016 by Himanshu Chawla, Shrey Sehgal, and Suman Patra. It operates over 100 kitchens across more than 30 cities and offers upwards of 400 cake designs, including cheesecakes, gourmet cakes, and customised occasion cakes. The company raised ₹100 crore (~$10.5 million) in a Series B round entirely from existing investor Faering Capital, which now holds a 26.31% stake. The round values Bakingo at ₹1,643 crore (~$173 million), a 2.6x jump from the ₹627 crore valuation set during its Series A. The previous raise was a $16 million round from Faering Capital in November 2023. Proceeds will be directed towards general business requirements and growth and expansion, per the company's Registrar of Companies filing. Bakingo reported ₹300 crore in revenue from operations in FY25, alongside a loss of ₹16.5 crore. AUM Ventures is an early-stage deeptech-focused VC firm with a portfolio that includes Skyroot Aerospace, Azimuth AI, Cosmoserve Space, and Sully.ai. It was an early institutional backer of Skyroot, which went on to become India's first spacetech unicorn. The firm has marked the first close of its India Innovation Fund II at ₹225 crore (~$23.6 million) against a target corpus of ₹750 crore (~$80 million). Over 65% of commitments came from international limited partners across the US and West Asia. The fund will deploy $750,000 to $2 million per deal at pre-seed and seed stages, targeting 25 to 30 startups, with reserves held for Series A and B follow-ons. Fund II builds on Fund I's track record of a 2.23x gross MOIC and 53% gross IRR, with two portfolio companies recording more than 14x valuation gains from AUM's entry price. The firm will focus on AI, spacetech, semiconductors, and defence tech. Used car marketplace Cars24 has seeded an independent enterprise AI company, Deployment Inc, with $5 million. Led by Cars24 executive Jayesh Gupta and former xAI engineer Aayush Gupta, Deployment Inc will embed teams of forward-deployed engineers inside client organisations to integrate frontier AI models into critical workflows. The startup has been named an OpenAI Select Partner for enterprise deployments and plans to hire 50 engineers immediately, targeting sectors including BFSI, healthcare, and logistics. Cars24 itself is the first customer, having used a similar internal model to cut service-request turnaround time from 32 hours to 30 minutes. Zostel has withdrawn its Delhi High Court a
