Deccan AI raises $25 million from A91 Partners, others
Artificial intelligence startup Deccan AI has raised $25 million in a round led by growth equity firm A91 Partners, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Prosus Ventures. Deccan AI will double down on building high-accuracy AI systems for enterprises and frontier model labs, the company's founder Rukesh Reddy told ET.
While Prosus is an existing investor in Deccan, for A91 Partners, which has backed companies such as Blue Tokai Coffee, Healthkart, Aye Finance and Giva, this is the first investment in an artificial intelligence startup.
“We’ve reached a tipping point where the industry is moving past the chatbot phase. Getting an agent to work in a demo is one thing; getting it to handle high-stakes business logic is another,” said Reddy.
The founder added that while large language models have improved rapidly, their probabilistic nature makes them inconsistent in real-world deployments, especially in enterprise settings, where the cost of error is high.
The company is looking to fill this gap. Deccan started with data and model training for frontier AI labs and has now built a platform-based approach. It combines data, reinforcement learning environments, and human expertise to improve models.
This has helped Deccan expand into enterprise offerings, where it will help organisations deploy, evaluate, and improve AI systems end-to-end rather than just supplying training data.
"One is an evaluation suite that helps enterprises monitor whether AI models are performing reliably in production. The second is a broader enterprise platform focused on automating back-office and middle-office operations using AI agents, deployed within the client’s infrastructure with a hybrid AI-plus-human model," said Reddy.
For enterprises, the startup has rolled out products such as 'Helix', a hybrid human-plus-automated evaluation suite, and 'EnterpriseOS', which focuses on automating back- and middle-office workflows.
While Prosus is an existing investor in Deccan, for A91 Partners, which has backed companies such as Blue Tokai Coffee, Healthkart, Aye Finance and Giva, this is the first investment in an artificial intelligence startup.
“We’ve reached a tipping point where the industry is moving past the chatbot phase. Getting an agent to work in a demo is one thing; getting it to handle high-stakes business logic is another,” said Reddy.
The founder added that while large language models have improved rapidly, their probabilistic nature makes them inconsistent in real-world deployments, especially in enterprise settings, where the cost of error is high.
The company is looking to fill this gap. Deccan started with data and model training for frontier AI labs and has now built a platform-based approach. It combines data, reinforcement learning environments, and human expertise to improve models.
This has helped Deccan expand into enterprise offerings, where it will help organisations deploy, evaluate, and improve AI systems end-to-end rather than just supplying training data.
"One is an evaluation suite that helps enterprises monitor whether AI models are performing reliably in production. The second is a broader enterprise platform focused on automating back-office and middle-office operations using AI agents, deployed within the client’s infrastructure with a hybrid AI-plus-human model," said Reddy.
For enterprises, the startup has rolled out products such as 'Helix', a hybrid human-plus-automated evaluation suite, and 'EnterpriseOS', which focuses on automating back- and middle-office workflows.
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