Companion Labs, a consumer AI firm creating interactive, entertainment-focused experiences for India's diverse and vernacular audiences, has secured $2.5 million in seed funding led by Peak XV’s Surge, along with contributions from All in Capital, UntitledVC, DeVC, and various angel investors.

The announcement comes after Companion Labs took part in the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi last week, where the company was highlighted during the summit's main Impact AI PitchFest. The platform highlighted promising early-stage AI startups, featuring Companion Labs as part of a chosen cohort supported by Peak XV at the event—emphasizing increasing investor confidence in founders creating AI-native products aimed at India’s upcoming wave of internet users.

Situated at the crossroads of AI and entertainment, Companion Labs is crafting immersive, character-focused experiences that enable users to delve into different lives, professions, and dreams via AI-driven stories. Instead of viewing AI mainly as a productivity instrument, the company regards AI as a creative platform, allowing individuals to “experience” parallel lives in deeply contextual environments influenced by language, culture, and personal aspirations.

Developed from the ground up for India, Companion Labs’ offerings capture the linguistic, cultural, and social intricacies of Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 demographics. The organization emphasizes local languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, and Bengali, aiming at a youthful, ambitious, and digitally inclined demographic that has traditionally embraced new technologies swiftly through entertainment.

This strategy corresponds with a larger transition emphasized at the India AI Impact Summit, where entrepreneurs and investors identified consumer-oriented, large-scale AI solutions in regional languages as a crucial factor in India's AI potential.

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Companion Labs was established by Akshay Jhanwar and Ajit Pol, who possess complementary expertise in consumer internet, gaming, and entertainment. Ajit has worked at Flipkart, Leap, and in the gaming sector, while Akshay has dedicated more than four years to Cred. Their initial realization arose from preliminary trials with international AI character platforms, which they discovered were predominantly Western in tone and context, restricting their appeal to Indian users.

Akshay Jhanwar, Co-founder, Companion Labs says, “India’s next wave of AI adoption will be driven by consumer experiences that feel native to our languages, cultures, and aspirations. We are building AI as a new form of entertainment, where people can explore alternate paths and identities in ways that feel deeply personal and rooted in their own context.”

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Ajit Pol, Co-founder, Companion Labs adds, “Entertainment has always been the gateway to mass technology adoption in India. With AI, storytelling becomes interactive and personalized at scale. Our ambition is to build category-defining consumer AI experiences from India, for India.”

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The company plans to deploy the funding to accelerate product development, invest in AI capabilities and continue refining its offering as it works toward product–market fit. Over the long term, Companion Labs aims to define a new category of AI-native entertainment built specifically for India’s vernacular internet users.