US-Based Operant AI Enters India To Help Enterprises Tackle Cyber Threats

Amid rising adoption of GenAI by Indian enterprises, Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity startup Operant AI, which claims to be the world’s only runtime AI application defense platform, has announced its India entry. 

Founded by Vrajesh Bhavsar, Priyanka Tembey and Ashely Roof in 2021, Operant AI operates an AI-focussed cybersecurity platform that helps enterprises secure cloud and AI applications from various threats, including data exfiltration, prompt injection, and more, with a “3D” approach of discovery, detection, and defense. 

“At Operant, we’ve built a solution that does more than detect threats—it actively protects sensitive data such as citizenship IDs, bank account numbers, and API keys in real time,” Bhavsar said. 

The startup has raised $13.5 Mn till date from investors like Felicis, SineWave Ventures, Gaingels, Alumni Ventures, Calm Ventures, among others. It last raised $10 Mn in its Series A round in September 2024. 

Operant AI is currently in talks with several Indian entities based out of Bengaluru, Pune, and Ahmedabad to onboard as its clients, it said in a statement.

The startup will hire a head of India and a team to serve Indian customers, with primary focus on banking, fintech, and AI-first companies, its cofounder and CEO Bhavsar told Inc42. 

Operant AI’s entry into India comes at a time when the number of cyberattacks are increasing rapidly. In 2024, India became the second most affected nation in terms of cyberattacks, after the US. 

Last year, the country saw some major cybersecurity breaches, including data breach at BSNL, which compromised 278 GB of sensitive user data, data theft at broking platform Angel One, which affected 7.9 Mn customers, and $234 Mn worth cryptocurrency theft at WazirX.

The Centre is taking necessary steps to overcome the frauds conducted via digital mode. For instance, India recently signed an MoU with the US to enhance cooperation in cybercrime investigations. 

Last year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) developed MuleHunter AI, an AI and ML model, to help banks and financial institutions detect mule accounts used by fraudsters. The AI-enabled system is focussed on alerting users about real-time financial fraud.

Meanwhile, the Centre is also taking steps to make the country a leader in the AI space. For this, it has launched the IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of INR 10,372 Cr, spread over the next five years. Under this, the central government aims to create an AI ecosystem with supercomputing capabilities comprising over 10,000 GPUs to various stakeholders.

In January, 10 companies, including Jio Platforms and Tata Communications, were selected for the final bidding process to procure these GPUs.