AI
Runable raises $21M to automate business growth—not just building
The Indian AI startup pivots from coding assistance to helping small businesses find customers and run marketing campaigns with autonomous agents.
TechCrunch — AI
Runable, a Bengaluru-based AI startup founded in 2025, has secured $21 million in Series A funding to expand beyond the crowded market of AI-powered website and app builders. The round was led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, valuing the company at $65 million post-investment.
Rather than compete directly with giants like OpenAI and Anthropic on coding tools, the 15-person team is focusing on the next step: helping fledgling businesses acquire customers. According to co-founder and CEO Umesh Kumar, "a business doesn't require Claude Code or anything. They require real outcomes"—framing the opportunity as a way to replace expensive agency services.
From builder to growth platform#
Runable began as an AI infrastructure play, using browser automation to scrape data at scale. After noticing users increasingly requesting non-coding help—creating presentations, landing pages, and promotional materials—the team pivoted toward a general-purpose agent that handles content creation alongside business growth tasks. Within three weeks of enabling payments in March, the startup reached a $2 million annualized revenue run rate.
The platform now spans what the company calls the "build" phase (websites, apps, slide decks via natural language) and the "grow" phase, which includes running ad campaigns, managing social media, optimizing search visibility, and improving visibility in AI chatbot result listings. The vision is to allow founders to request a target number of customers directly, rather than juggling separate tools for hosting, analytics, advertising platforms, and marketing management.
Current reach and economic challenges#
Runable claims roughly 1.7 million registered users, with strong traction in the U.S., UK, and Japan—the latter expected to match the U.S. in prominence within the next month. A small but growing user base also exists in Brazil. Over the past 90 days, users burned through more than 1 trillion tokens, with 60–70% consumption attributed to paying customers.
However, the startup faces a significant profitability hurdle: negative gross margins. Kumar attributed this to subsidized AI inference costs while the startup develops its own models. The company is betting that falling inference costs will improve unit economics, with Kumar noting potential 10x reductions in inference spending as the market matures.
