Prosus is an Indian AI startup investor, such as Arivihan and CodeKarma that specializes in application-layer solutions that have a global scalability potential.

Dutch investment giant Prosus NV is sharpening its focus on the Indian AI application layer and is putting money behind startups that have actually deployed AI as part of working processes. Its venture capital wing has recently financed an AI-based education platform known as Arivihan and a productivity tool that is sold to software developers known as CodeKarma.

Having received the seed checks of less than $1 million, the Indian startup Arivihan closed a pre-Series A round of $4.2 million headed by Prosus and Accel as well as GSF Ventures. The service targets students from regular schools in second-tier cities and beyond. CodeKarma, Bangalore-based startup received 2.5 million dollars in a pre-seed round that Prosus, Accel, and Xeed Ventures co-led.

Prosus regards the sheer size of the internet users, the linguistic variability, and the nature of the problem statements as the reasons why India has become the ideal sandbox and trial-and-error scenario to test scalable AI solutions. In FY25, Prosus invested $400 million globally and of this, $88 million was in AI-related investments where India ranked amongst the largest beneficiaries.

In addition to investing in the application layer, Prosus is also continuing to invest in middleware startups, such as Deccan AI, that are training high-quality AI model data. Meesho, Rapido, and Swiggy are already part of the portfolio of the firm in India.

Bullish on agentic AI, self-learning systems that people need only occasionally, Prosus intends to remain a funder of early-stage startups that develop locally relevant solutions that can be scaled globally.