Two young Indian entrepreneurs, Naman Bansal and Shreyans Jain, have raised $1.3 million in seed funding for their San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, Manicule. The funding round was co-led by Y Combinator and Broom Ventures, with participation from angel investors.
(Also read: Sarvam AI co-founder warns India risks becoming a ‘digital colony’ over dependence on foreign AI )
The startup aims to change how software companies reach customers by helping AI platforms discover, recommend and use their products, according to a Grit Daily report published on October 27. He began working with international technology companies at 13, gaining experience in developer relations, technical content and software distribution. Jain, Manicule’s co-founder and chief technology officer, started programming at 14 and chose to pursue a career in technology instead of attending university. The startup is part of Y Combinator ‘s Spring 2026 batch.
Bansal, Manicule’s co-founder and CEO, grew up in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. His experience helped him identify how AI-powered tools were changing the way developers discovered software. “Passive tracking dashboards don’t bring in customers. We handle the execution end-to-end so AI models don’t just mention our clients; they are chosen and used. Manicule develops automated systems that help software companies improve technical documentation, increase visibility in AI-generated recommendations and make their products accessible to AI agents. Its clients have included Supermemory, PromptLayer, Bright Data and Courier. The newly raised capital will support engineering recruitment, improvements to automated workflows and the expansion of services for enterprise customers.
“The fundamental unit of software discovery has shifted from the Google search query to the AI prompt,” Bansal said. The company says its technology enables its team to operate at five times the capacity of traditional marketing agencies. “Manicule is at the frontier of how software will be discovered and purchased going forward,” said Aaron Epstein, general partner at Y Combinator.
Over the next five years, he worked in technical marketing and built an earlier startup.
He previously worked as a founding engineer at Supermemory, where he helped develop its consumer application and scale its Model Context Protocol server to more than 100,000 users, according to the report. (Also read: 2 IIT-Delhi graduates gave up over ₹ 1.3 crore in salaries to build a startup.
It just raised $1 million through Y Combinator ) “Foundation models struggle with developer tone and technical accuracy,” Jain said. “We treat this as an engineering problem, building custom agent rails internally to bridge the gap between AI automation and technical precision.”
