Indian AI app dev startup Rocket.new raises $15M to build production-ready apps from natural language, targeting enterprise scale with agentic AI systems and a focus on serious applications beyond prototypes.

Rocket.new, an Indian startup pioneering an AI-powered app development platform, has raised $15 million in a seed round led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Accel and Together Fund. The funding comes just three months after the company launched its beta platform in June and positions Rocket.new as a serious contender in the fast-evolving vibe-coding space, competing with tools like Lovable, Cursor, and Bolt. The platform enables users to build full, production-ready applications from natural-language prompts—going beyond simple prototypes to deliver functional, scalable software. Co-founded by Vishal Virani, Rahul Shingala, and Deepak Dhanak, Rocket.new is based in Surat, a city traditionally known for diamonds and textiles but not a typical tech hub. The team previously founded DhiWise, a developer workflow platform, and pivoted to build Rocket.new as a next-generation AI development system. Since its launch, Rocket.new has attracted over 400,000 users across 180 countries, including more than 10,000 paying subscribers. The company has achieved $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue and aims to grow to $20–25 million by year-end, with a target of $60–70 million by June next year. Virani describes Rocket.new as the first “vibe solution platform” designed not just for initial ideation but for the full product lifecycle—from development to scaling. The company is building an agentic system that uses AI to handle not only code generation but also competitive research, product planning, and deployment, potentially reducing the need for traditional product managers. The current version, 0.3, has already powered the creation of half a million applications. Early adopters include solopreneurs, front-end developers, and product managers from major organizations like Meta, PayPal, KPMG, PwC, and Times Internet, who use the platform for personal and professional projects. Notably, 80% of users are building serious applications, not just landing pages. Among them, 12% have developed e-commerce platforms in grocery and apparel, 10% have built fintech apps, 5–6% have created B2B tools, and 4–5% have launched mental health applications. Mobile app development accounts for 45% of usage, while websites make up 55%. Rocket.new integrates large language models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google’s Gemini with its own proprietary deep learning systems trained on data from DhiWise. Virani emphasizes that the underlying architecture differs significantly from competitors, enabling more robust and production-ready outputs. While initial app generation takes about 25 minutes—slower than the three-minute turnaround of some rivals—early testing shows Rocket.new delivers more complete, functional applications with all necessary modules included. The platform offers a free tier capped at one million tokens, with paid plans starting at $25 per month for five million tokens. This pricing model filters out casual users, contributing to a healthy gross margin of 50–55%, which the company aims to increase to 60–70%. The U.S. is Rocket.new’s top market, accounting for 26% of revenue, followed by Europe (15–20%) and India (10%). To better serve its American users, the company is establishing a U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto. The seed funding will support go-to-market expansion, deeper market penetration, and investment in proprietary AI models and research. Virani credits the company’s early growth to organic traction through word-of-mouth and viral social content. Kartik Gupta of Salesforce Ventures highlighted the platform’s focus on solving the gap between AI-generated code and production readiness. “Rocket.new is purpose-built to address iteration, maintenance, and deployment at enterprise scale,” he said. Rocket.new currently employs 58 people, mostly in Surat, and plans to double its engineering and product team in India over the next year to support rapid growth.