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Bengaluru based AI startup profound.me has emerged from stealth with $1.5 million in seed funding, as former Swiggy and Zomato leaders Anuj Rathi and Prashant Parashar set out to redefine professional networking through AI powered representation.
Founded by Rathi and Parashar, who have held senior product and technology leadership roles at Swiggy, Zomato, Cleartrip, Flipkart, Ola and Walmart Labs, profound.me is an AI native platform designed to provide every professional with a personal AI representative. The platform aims to help users discover career opportunities, build meaningful networks and navigate professional growth more effectively.
The seed funding round attracted backing from several prominent technology founders and investors, including Sriharsha Majety, CEO of Swiggy; Nandan Reddy, Co Founder of Swiggy; Pankaj Chaddah, former Co Founder of Zomato; Harshil Mathur, CEO of Razorpay; Kunal Shah; and Bhuvan Gupta, Co Founder of OfBusiness, alongside institutional investors Stellaris Venture Partners and 3one4 Capital.
The company said it will deploy the fresh capital to strengthen its engineering and product teams, enhance its AI capabilities and accelerate the development of its matching and introductions engine. Over the next 12 months, profound.me plans to expand its founding network and onboard one million professionals globally ahead of a wider beta launch.
Commenting on the launch, Anuj Rathi, Co-Founder and CEO, profound.me, said, “Just as actors have agents and athletes have managers, profound.me gives each professional their own AI Rep. It learns your work and your judgment, and keeps you ready for the next move and the connection that has the potential to change your career trajectory. This is what the future of work looks like when representation is available to everyone.”
profound.me is building an AI first platform where every professional is assigned a personalised AI representative designed to understand their career profile and proactively identify opportunities.
The process begins with a 30-minute voice conversation, enabling the AI to develop an evolving understanding of an individual's experience, expertise, decision making approach, work style, ambitions and professional context. Based on these insights, the AI works in the background to surface relevant opportunities, facilitate meaningful introductions and strengthen long term professional relationships.
The platform also caters to employers by enabling hiring managers to create AI representatives for roles and teams. According to the company, this allows organisations to capture deeper context than traditional job descriptions, resulting in more accurate talent discovery, matching and recruitment.
Prashant Parashar, Co-Founder and CTO, profound.me, said, “Voice AI has reached a point where a machine can hold a genuinely curious conversation. We built the reasoning layer that turns those conversations into an AI Rep. That richer understanding of a professional enables significantly better matches, shifting professional discovery from keyword-based search to intelligence-driven matchmaking."
Rahul Chowdhri, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, said, "There’s a growing gap between how good someone is at their job and how easy they are to find. Resumes and LinkedIn profiles capture titles, not judgment. profound.me uses a voice-first, AI-native approach to build an always-on ‘AI Rep’ that represents professionals with far greater depth. We are excited to back the team as they build the professional OS for the AI era.”
Pranav Pai, Managing Partner at 3one4 Capital, said, “The biggest constraint in hiring today is not the supply of talent but the ability to verify fit. Resumes and static profiles cannot capture judgment, working style or real context. profound.me is rebuilding that layer for an AI-first world, and we are backing the team as they redefine how professionals are understood and matched.”
profound.me has opened its platform to an initial cohort through an early access programme, with a wider beta launch scheduled for later this year.
Looking ahead, the startup aims to create an AI driven professional ecosystem where intelligent representatives act on behalf of individuals and organisations to enable deeper discovery, trusted introductions and more effective ways to build careers, recruit talent and foster business relationships.
