Gurugram-based enterprise AI startup TrueFan AI has raised $10 Mn (about ₹96 Cr) in its Series A funding round led by Baring Private Equity Partners India and Z3Partners. IAN Alpha Fund and 3Lines Venture Capital also participated in the round.

The startup plans to use the capital to expand its enterprise customer base, enter new markets across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and scale its presence in the US.

“Our key investment priorities are distribution and geographic expansion. We aim to grow our monthly client base while strengthening our presence in India and expanding into nearby markets,” TrueFan AI cofounder Nimish Goel told Inc42.

Founded by Goel and Devender Bindal in early 2020 as a celebrity engagement platform, TrueFan AI has undergone a significant transformation over the past two years following its pivot to enterprise AI. As part of the shift, the startup relaunched its generative AI video platform to create hyper-personalised videos featuring celebrities and brands.

The pivot began in early 2024, with Zomato becoming its first customer. Since then, the startup has expanded to more than 100 enterprise clients across sectors such as BFSI, healthcare, consumer goods and media. It counts Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, Axis Max Life Insurance, Cipla, BharatPe and Goibibo among its customers.

TrueFan AI claims to have seen 11X revenue growth over the past 20 months. For the financial year ended March 31, 2025, the startup reported a 131.1% revenue growth to ₹17.1 Cr from ₹7.4 Cr in FY24. Meanwhile, its loss declined 36.7% to ₹8.8 Cr from ₹13.9 Cr in FY24 (Source: Tofler).

“Our burn today is just 10% of our revenue and we have grown more than 3X in the last financial year,” Goel claimed.

The startup, which has raised a total funding of $21 Mn to date, competes with the likes of VideoVerse, InVideo Enterprise, Dubverse among others in the AI-led video creation market.

From Fan Moments To AI Videos At Scale 

TrueFan AI’s journey began in February 2020 with a simple idea — helping fans connect with celebrities. Goel said the inspiration came from his personal experience. A self-confessed sports fan, he had gone to unusual lengths to meet his idols over the years, from securing a selfie with Virat Kohli to watching Roger Federer play live and collecting his autograph and jumping over a wall to meet Sachin Tendulkar.

“Having had these experiences between 2012 and 2016, I felt there was an opportunity to create more such interactions between celebrities and their fans,” Goel said.

However, the founders quickly realised that the biggest bottleneck was celebrity time. While fan demand was virtually unlimited, celebrities could only record a finite number of personalised videos. To address that constraint, the startup began investing in video-generation technology, using its early funding to build a team of engineers and develop its own video foundational model.

The startup’s early days were equally unconventional. Before securing its first cheque, it did not even have a name. Minutes before a meeting with investor Ronnie Screwvala in 2020, Goel and his mentor settled on the name ‘TrueFan’ while sitting outside Screwvala’s home. By the end of the meeting, Screwvala committed $1 Mn and encouraged the founders to close the $3 Mn round in early 2020.

After nearly two years of building the underlying technology, TrueFan AI launched its first celebrity avatar with actor Ranveer Singh in late 2021. It subsequently built AI avatars for 150+ celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Rohit Sharma, and Rishabh Pant, to name a few.

By March 2024, the startup had built a consumer platform with 30 celebrity avatars, generating about 30,000 personalised videos every month. However, the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 accelerated broader acceptance of AI-generated content, reinforcing the founders’ belief that advances in generative AI could unlock a much larger opportunity beyond celebrity engagement. By early 2024, this conviction culminated in the startup’s pivot to enterprise customers.

Building For The Future 

For TrueFan AI, the next frontier is interactive video. The founders believe video will evolve from a one-way communication format into a real-time conversational interface, where customers can engage directly with AI-powered avatars trained on an individual’s knowledge, presentations and past interactions.

In its next phase, the startup is building real-time AI video agents that can interact dynamically across customer support, sales, onboarding, and product discovery use cases.

The cofounder said that the global video production market, estimated at $900 Bn, presents a big opportunity. As enterprises increasingly move budgets away from traditional production houses and agencies toward AI-led content creation, TrueFan aims to position itself as a category leader.

At the same time, the startup is scaling its infrastructure to support this demand. With a team of more than 110 employees, API-led enterprise deployments and the ability to generate up to 5 lakh videos per minute, it is betting that real-time video agents will become a core channel for how businesses communicate with customers.

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