The way people discover products online is changing fast, and ecommerce brands are struggling to keep up. Instead of scrolling endlessly through Google or marketplaces, consumers are using AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for recommendations. 

As a result, a simple prompt to chatbots is now deciding which products get surfaced, compared and ultimately bought. This shift has created a new kind of visibility problem for brands. 

Traditional search engine optimisation (SEO) and digital ads were built for clicks and search rankings, but AI-native discovery works differently. Product metadata, reviews, descriptions, catalogue structures and even shopping journeys now need to be optimised for AI-powered interfaces. This is the problem Bengaluru-based startup Nudge is trying to solve. 

Founded in 2023 by college friends Kanishka Thakur and Gaurav Rawat, Nudge positions itself as an agentic commerce platform that helps ecommerce brands improve how they are discovered, recommended and purchased inside AI-powered shopping experiences. 

The idea grew out of a simple question: when a shopper asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, how does a brand make sure it is the one that appears? For Nudge, the answer lay not just in search visibility, but in redesigning commerce for the AI era. 

This ambition now sits at the centre of the startup that began as an esports platform, and has since evolved into one of the interesting bets on how the future of online shopping will work.

Before building Nudge, Thakur and Rawat spent years building inside gaming communities, where they learned how strongly engaged users behave when they care deeply about a product. 

Thakur, a gamer, played competitive esports titles and also contributed gaming editorials during college. Consequently, he took the entrepreneurial plunge in 2021 and founded Klutchh, an esports fantasy platform for titles such as Counter-Strike, PUBG and Free Fire. 

The product scaled quickly, reaching nearly 50,000 users within months, giving the founders early proof that they could build software people actively wanted to use. 

“We had people constantly active on our Discord servers and heavily using the product. That’s when we realised we genuinely liked building products that communities cared about,” Thakur said in a chat with Inc42.

But the business model failed to take off. In Thakur’s words, esports fantasy is too niche, and users are often unwilling to pay despite strong engagement. Nevertheless, the experience paved the way for Nudge in 2023.

Initially, the startup focused on ecommerce personalisation, helping brands customise shopping experiences and product pages for different users. But the rise of generative AI changed the startup’s direction.

As conversational interfaces started becoming the first place people looked for answers, the founders saw that the problem was no longer just what happened on a website – it was how brands were represented on AI platforms even before the shopper arrived.

In March 2026, Nudge formally launched its agentic commerce platform.

Historically, D2C brands optimised for Google rankings, marketplace search and Meta-driven traffic. Today, they also have to think about how AI models interpret, rank and recommend their products in response to natural-language prompts. 

But instead of telling brands what users are asking about them on chatbots (prompts, themes and discovery patterns), Nudge focuses on the “action layer”: once the shopper clicks through, the experience has to adapt to the user’s original intent. 

So, if someone asks ChatGPT for comfortable running shoes under $100 with quick delivery, Nudge dynamically modifies the shopping experience itself based on that intent. This involves changing product descriptions, surfacing specific reviews, highlighting bundles, or altering recommendations that align with the original AI conversation.

The startup also enriches ecommerce catalogues by continuously updating product schemas, metadata, attributes, and structured information based on how consumers discuss products across AI platforms.

Simply put, Nudge ensures ecommerce brands remain understandable and discoverable inside AI systems while also improving the likelihood of a purchase once traffic lands on the website.

“The AI platform becomes the salesperson. The challenge is making sure the product page still matches what the user was actually looking for,” said Thakur.

The startup primarily works with ecommerce businesses on Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, with clients spanning apparel, beauty, fashion, food, health and lifestyle. It also differentiates itself from broader GEO and AEO companies by focusing specifically on commerce workflows, rather than generic AI visibility. 

For the startup, the rise of agentic shopping is not a distant possibility, but the new interface layer that brands have to learn to operate within.

At the centre of Nudge’s platform is a mix of catalogue enrichment, AI experimentation and personalised interface design. Under the hood, the startup uses Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 and Google’s Gemini 3.5 models across different workflows depending on the use case. One of its key capabilities revolves around autonomous experimentation.

Traditionally, ecommerce companies conducted A/B testing by comparing two versions of a product page before rolling out the better-performing version. Nudge instead creates multiple variants of webpages simultaneously, monitors performance continuously, retires underperforming versions automatically and generates newer alternatives in real time. 

The idea is to create self-improving product experiences that evolve based on user behaviour and conversational shopping intent. “What’s happening is, at all times, you have multiple kinds of personalised product pages running continuously,” Thakur said.

The startup believes this capability becomes increasingly important as AI-generated traffic scales across ecommerce.

Buoyed by its differentiated offerings, the startup continues to see healthy early traction. With more than 25 paying customers under its belt, Nudge’s biggest chunk of revenue comes from US-based customers. India, however, remains a smaller but growing market. 

Catering to brands like L’Oreal, Nykaa and BigBasket, the startup operates on a subscription-based model. Pricing is tied to the volume of “agentic commerce opportunities” processed through the platform, rather than standalone features.

It also recently announced a $1.1 Mn pre-seed round from s16vc. Other investors include operators of Shopify, Nutanix, and Postman.

Going forward, Nudge plans to dig deeper into the ecommerce infrastructure stack, rolling out AI-driven advertising workflows and post-click purchase journeys. It is also in discussions to onboard larger enterprise retail players, which operate across both ecommerce and offline retail businesses.

For Thakur, the long-term opportunity lies beyond simply helping brands appear inside AI-generated recommendations. “The search part becomes table stakes. The bigger opportunity is controlling the actual commerce experience from discovery to purchase,” he added.

As conversational AI becomes the default front door to shopping, Nudge is betting that the next ecommerce moat will be built around the entire AI-native shopping journey. But the question is: can it deliver?

The post How Nudge Is Reinventing Ecommerce For The Agentic AI Era appeared first on Inc42 Media.