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Two Indian teenage founders raise $1.3 million for Y Combinator-backed AI startup
Two Indian founders raised $1.3 million for their San Francisco-based AI startup, Manicule, backed by Y Combinator.
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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.
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According to a Grit Daily report published on October 27, the startup aims to change how software companies reach customers by helping AI platforms discover, recommend and use their products.
From Agra to Silicon Valley
Bansal, Manicule's co-founder and CEO, grew up in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. He began working with international technology companies at 13, gaining experience in developer relations, technical content and software distribution.
Over the next five years, he worked in technical marketing and built an earlier startup. His experience helped him identify how AI-powered tools were changing the way developers discovered software.
“The fundamental unit of software discovery has shifted from the Google search query to the AI prompt,” Bansal said.
“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.”
Shreyans Jain began coding at 14
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.
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.
“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.”
What does their startup do?
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.
The company says its technology enables its team to operate at five times the capacity of traditional marketing agencies.
Its clients have included Supermemory, PromptLayer, Bright Data and Courier.
The startup is part of Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch.
“Manicule is at the frontier of how software will be discovered and purchased going forward,” said Aaron Epstein, general partner at Y Combinator.
The newly raised capital will support engineering recruitment, improvements to automated workflows and the expansion of services for enterprise customers.
