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.
Reddy said the company is primarily targeting Fortune 500 firms, with global capability centres (GCCs) serving as a key entry point.
Hiring for enterprise customers
Deccan AI is also setting up a Bengaluru office focused on enterprise business, complementing its existing presence in San Francisco and Hyderabad. The team in Bengaluru is expected to grow from a handful of employees to 20-30 over the year.
The nature of work is shifting on the AI front, said Reddy. New skills such as prompting, evaluation, and system oversight are emerging.
Kaushik Anand, partner at A91 Partners, said Deccan is building the essential infrastructure for the next decade of software. “As the world moves from experimentation to execution, the need for Deccan's evaluation and monitoring layer will become non-negotiable.”
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.
Reddy said the company is primarily targeting Fortune 500 firms, with global capability centres (GCCs) serving as a key entry point.
Hiring for enterprise customers
Deccan AI is also setting up a Bengaluru office focused on enterprise business, complementing its existing presence in San Francisco and Hyderabad. The team in Bengaluru is expected to grow from a handful of employees to 20-30 over the year.
The nature of work is shifting on the AI front, said Reddy. New skills such as prompting, evaluation, and system oversight are emerging.
Kaushik Anand, partner at A91 Partners, said Deccan is building the essential infrastructure for the next decade of software. “As the world moves from experimentation to execution, the need for Deccan's evaluation and monitoring layer will become non-negotiable.”
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