A 22-year-old entrepreneur from India has drawn attention in Silicon Valley after raising pre-seed funding for his artificial intelligence startup and leaving university to pursue the venture full time. Kinjal Nandy, founder and chief executive of Sonatic, claimed he has secured pre-seed funding at a reported valuation of ₹191 crore. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s accelerator a16z Speedrun, with participation from angel investors linked to OpenAI, NVIDIA and Meta’s superintelligence teams. The startup works in the area of human-computer interaction, with a focus on AI systems designed to work alongside users rather than operate only through direct prompts.
From small-town India to early startup success
