Cactus Partners Leads Dollar 7 Million Investment in Brandworks Technologies
Mumbai, August 12, 2025: Cactus Partners (CPL), an early-growth venture capital fund, has led a USD 7 million Series A round in Brandworks Technologies Pvt. Ltd., one of India’s fast-growing electronics design-led manufacturing company that transforms ideas into market-ready products. This marks CPL’s eleventh investment and its third in the manufacturing sector.
Brandworks Technologies is a next-generation electronics R&D and manufacturing player, delivering innovations across AI hardware, IoT solutions, advanced audio systems, charging technologies, financial devices, surveillance systems, and renewable energy products. Partnering with leading global chip companies, Brandworks co-creates cutting-edge solutions with a focus on design excellence, manufacturing precision, and customer success.
With this funding, Brandworks will expand and upgrade its R&D centers, build partnerships and customer relationships in key international markets, and invest in next-generation product platforms with an emphasis on performance, sustainability, and global standards. The company will also scale manufacturing through new high-efficiency production lines and strengthen its innovation engine by hiring top engineering, design, and operations talent.
“This fundraise is fuel for a much larger mission — to make Brandworks a global leader in electronics R&D and manufacturing. We’re here to prove that world-class innovation can be imagined, designed, and built in India, and delivered to the world,” said Ishwar Kumhar, Co-Founder, Brandworks Technologies.
Echoing this sentiment, Nikita Kumawat, Co-Founder of Brandworks, added that they are truly delighted to partner with Cactus Partners. “Their proactive support and thoughtful involvement have been instrumental for us. As a founder-focused fund with deep expertise in the sector, Cactus Partners brings invaluable insight and commitment to helping entrepreneurial ventures like ours succeed. We greatly appreciate their partnership and look forward to achieving new milestones together,” she said.
Amit Sharma, General Partner at Cactus Partners, commented on the transaction, saying, “We are very excited to partner with Brandworks. The way Ishwar and Nikita have built this business so far is truly commendable. The robust and consistent growth, while maintaining healthy economics, is a testament to their impeccable execution. Electronics manufacturing as an industry is expected to grow at a healthy pace in the foreseeable future, thanks to the “Make in India” initiatives and changing supply chains and geopolitics. High quality and well-managed companies, such as Brandworks, are well poised to grow at a significantly faster pace than the industry. Brandworks has built the business in a very capital-efficient manner so far, and the capital infusion will further accelerate the growth curve. We look forward to working closely with the Brandworks team and support them with strategic resources in addition to capital.”
So far, CPL has backed companies such as Lohum, Indigrid, Intangles, Kapture, Vitraya, AMPM, Auric, Parkmate, Ananant Systems, and Rubix (exited). With this strategic partnership, Brandworks and Cactus Partners are set to accelerate India’s position on the global electronics innovation and manufacturing map.
India’s Fastest Household Help App Pronto Raises Dollar 11M in Series A
New Delhi, India , August 12, 2025: Pronto, India’s first real-time household help platform, has raised $11 million in Series A funding co-led by General Catalyst and Glade Brook Capital, with continued participation from Bain Capital Ventures (BCV). The investment underscores strong conviction in Pronto’s rapid traction and the vast white space it is addressing in India’s domestic help market. With its 10‑minute, shift‑based model for on‑demand home services, Pronto is building a new urban utility — dependable, trusted, and designed for high-frequency use — at a scale India has never seen before.
Domestic help in India is both ubiquitous and invisible — woven into daily life yet largely absent from the formal economy. For millions of households, finding help still depends on informal networks, uncertain availability, and unverified trust. For workers, the sector often means irregular income and little recognition. Pronto was founded in 2024 to change this equation; to bring predictability, safety, and dignity to a service everyone depends on but few have reimagined. By treating household help as critical urban infrastructure — delivered in minutes, built on training and trust — Pronto is setting a new standard for how cities manage the rhythms of everyday life.
“Pronto is not just another app — it’s architecting an entirely new layer of urban infrastructure for household help,” said Anjali Sardana, Founder & CEO of Pronto. “We’re tackling a sector that has remained unstructured and unreliable for decades — by offering instant, vetted help through a shift‑based model that elevates worker earnings and service trust. With this funding, we’ll deepen operations, build workforce resilience, and prove that household help can scale as a high-frequency utility in India’s most time‑strapped cities.”
Pronto isn’t replicating existing home‑service models; it’s redefining them. Where most platforms act as aggregators, Pronto operates on a shift‑based delivery system that gives workers predictable income and users guaranteed reliability — a first for India’s domestic help sector. Each professional undergoes rigorous training and verification and is equipped to fulfill tasks instantly, creating trust at scale in a category long driven by informal referrals. By embedding quality, speed, and dignity into a single platform, Pronto is carving out a new space in urban life — not just meeting the need for convenience, but turning household help into a high‑frequency utility that evolves with the pace of modern cities.
“Pronto is creating something novel for India: an infrastructure layer for domestic help that brings structure to traditionally informal markets,” commented Neeraj Arora, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “Anjali demonstrates the obsessive focus, clarity of thought, and large-scale vision with urgency that defines what we believe to be exceptional founders. This shift-based model creates predictable incomes for workers while delivering reliability for households, representing the infrastructure-building companies we back: those creating new economic frameworks across India’s expanding urban centers.”
“Pronto’s execution across product and growth is exceptional,” said Paul Hudson, Founder & CIO at Glade Brook Capital. “Anjali and the Pronto team are building stakeholder trust and customer delight through operational excellence and speed. Pronto is not another home-help app – it’s rapidly becoming a consumer infrastructure platform that delivers meaningful work opportunities and helps meet the daily needs of urban families.”
Commenting on Bain Capital Ventures’ early investment in Pronto and their continued participation in this round, Ajay Agarwal, Partner, Bain Capital Ventures said, “When we first invested in Pronto at the seed stage, we saw a rare chance to formalize a service millions depend on yet few had reimagined. In just a few months, Anjali and team have proven that this model can scale — delivering high‑frequency, real‑time help to households while elevating incomes for workers. Our continued support reflects our belief that Pronto is defining a new category of urban utility for India.”
With this milestone, Pronto is accelerating its vision of making household help as seamless and dependable as any other modern utility. Over the next 12-18 months, the company will expand beyond Gurgaon into Mumbai, Bengaluru, and other metros, establishing micro‑hubs across key residential clusters to guarantee sub‑10‑minute fulfillment at scale. The funding will also support the onboarding and training of 10,000 additional professionals, investment in quality‑assurance systems, and rollout of real‑time operations technology that powers Pronto’s shift‑based model. By bridging reliability for families and stability for workers, Pronto is redefining how urban India manages the essentials of daily life — and setting the standard for a category poised for nationwide impact.
Recode Studios Strengthens Presence in Gujarat with Strategic Retail Expansion
12th August 2025 : Recode Studios, India’s fast-growing beauty and skincare brand,is all on an aggressive expansion plan in Gujarat. The brand just opened two new stores in Ahmedabad and Surat to bring international quality products to the people of Gujarat. While Surat got its first store, this will be second Recode store in Ahmedabad. The first Ahmedabad store was opened in March and the brand saw the opportunity to open another store to cater the customers better.
The Surat and Ahmedabad openings reinforces the brand’s retail growth plan across Tier I Tier II and metro cities’. The opening is consistent with Recode Studios’ larger mission to provide research-led, quality, and value-for-money beauty solutions to consumers pan-India. Recode Studios, India’s fast-growing beauty and skincare brand, is excited to launch its new store in Surat, Gujarat. Located at Shop No. G-38, Ascon Plaza, Near Bulkabhavan School, Adajan, Surat – 395009, and the other store located at Shop No. GF-6, Sargam Apartment, Opp Chandan Farm, Nr Satyam Status Satellite Road, Jodhpur Ahemdabad, 380015, the stores mark a strategic foray into one of Gujarat’s trend-conscious and beauty-conscious consumer groups.
Designed to offer a luxury and interactive retailing experience, the store has the company’s entire range of best-selling makeup and skincare products under one roof. Designed specifically to focus on Recode’s philosophy of affordability, inclusivity, and innovation in order to give world-class beauty solutions to all, not just the elite class, the store offers an end-to-end product experience with hands-on and experiential involvement.
Mr. Rahul Sachdeva, Co-Founder of Recode Studios, said, “Gujarat has always been a state that celebrates beauty, individuality, and self-expression. With this new store, we’re creating more than just a retail space; we’re building a community hub where customers can explore, experience, and engage with our brand firsthand. This marks an important milestone in our retail journey, and there’s much more to come.”
The store is a stunningly edited environment in which consumers are able to discover, learn about, and purchase Recode’s clean beauty and performance products. With each Recode store, the Surat and Ahmedabad stores are the physical manifestation of the brand’s desire to forge genuine relationships with consumers through the combination of globally quality products and a personal, local touch.
With this rollout, Recode Studios is yet again positioning itself as a popular next-generation Indian beauty company that sits at the nexus of world standards and local sensitivities. By foraying into physical stores in city limits like Surat and Ahmedabad, Recode is not just developing awareness but also consumer trust through direct experience and service.