Top Startup News Today: A Deep Dive Into the Biggest Moves Shaping | 5th December

On most days, India’s startup ecosystem feels like a restless living organism—expanding, contracting, reinventing itself and constantly testing the limits of innovation. But every now and then, a single day neatly captures the sheer breadth of this momentum. From big-ticket investment manoeuvres and data-driven revelations in parliament to the evolving identities of homegrown tech companies, the day brought together stories of ambition, transformation, and resilience. Whether it’s legacy giants pivoting into software-first models or new-age ventures powering hiring, AI, and sports education, the ecosystem is buzzing with movement across every layer.

Here’s a deep, detailed, and humanised look at what shaped the conversation across India’s startup corridors today.

Top Startup News Today

Celebrity Capital: When Stardom Meets Startup Strategy

2025 wasn’t just another year of celebrity endorsements—it was the year when celebrities stopped being faces on hoardings and became voices in boardrooms.

YourStory’s list of Top 10 celebrity-backed ventures of 2025 highlighted how the lines between cultural influence and business innovation are blurring rapidly. From actors investing in clean tech and athleisure to sports figures backing health, fintech, and gaming, celebrity partners are no longer passive cheerleaders. They are co-creators of consumer trends, shaping markets with their clout and conviction.

This shift signals a broader maturity in India’s startup landscape—one where star power is merging meaningfully with entrepreneurial vision.

Unstop: Building India’s Largest Early-Talent Hiring Engine

In a country where millions of students enter the job market every year, matching talent to opportunity remains a monumental challenge. New Delhi–based Unstop.ai, however, is fast becoming the bridge.

With a 28-million-strong talent community, Unstop has built one of India’s largest early-talent ecosystems—a platform where students can find internships, jobs, hackathons, challenges, mentorship sessions, and even free résumé-building tools.

For employers, the full-stack hiring engine simplifies everything:
- Registrations
- Assessments and coding tests
- AI-proctored exams
- Automated scoring
- Interview management
- Analytics dashboards

A single platform, built to reduce the chaos of early hiring.

Founder & CEO Ankit Aggarwal calls it a mission to democratise opportunities—and the momentum suggests he’s doing exactly that.

Pine Labs: From POS Terminals to a Software-Heavy Powerhouse

For years, Pine Labs carried the image of a point-of-sale (POS) terminal player—a legacy it couldn’t shake off easily. But CEO Amrish Rau always insisted that the company was evolving into something bigger.

Now, the numbers have finally caught up with the narrative.

In its first earnings call since going public, Pine Labs revealed that:

• POS subscription and rental revenues now account for just 29% of total revenue, down from over 40% two years ago.

• A whopping 71% now comes from software-driven services, including transaction processing, consumer financing, online payments, and prepaid card solutions.

This isn't a cosmetic pivot. It marks Pine Labs’ arrival as a fintech software powerhouse—leaner, diversified, and aligned with the future of digital commerce.

SoftBank Looks to Exit Two-Thirds of Its Stake in InMobi

Nearly two decades ago, InMobi became India’s first unicorn and SoftBank’s first-ever India investment. Today, the Japanese investor is preparing to significantly reduce that bet—by more than two-thirds.

If executed, this move will:

• Create a major liquidity event for SoftBank.

• Strengthen SoftBank’s India returns portfolio.

• Add a new chapter to one of the earliest venture stories in Indian tech.

SoftBank’s India run has been mixed—gains from PB Fintech and Blinkit, but losses of over $500M from Paytm. An InMobi exit, therefore, carries symbolic and financial weight for the group’s evolving India strategy.

A Stark Statistic: 24,000 Women-Led MSMEs Shut Down in 5 Years

On the policy front, Parliament was confronted with a sobering datapoint.

Minister of State for MSMEs, Shobha Karandlaje, revealed that between July 2020 and November 2025:

• 24,000+ women-led MSMEs shut down,

• Resulting in the loss of over 1.6 lakh jobs.

Yet, there’s another side to the picture:

• More than 2.86 crore women-led enterprises were registered during the same period.

The contrasting figures highlight a dual story—massive entrepreneurial participation but also significant vulnerabilities in sustaining women-led enterprises. As India pushes for inclusive economic growth, this data will likely spark important conversations on systemic support for women entrepreneurs.

Funding Corner: Capital Continues to Back Deep Tech, Sports, and Music Innovation

Even as macroeconomic uncertainties persist globally, Indian startups continue attracting strategic capital across diverse sectors.

CoreOps.AI Raises $3.5M to Build an Enterprise AI Operating System

Deep-tech startup CoreOps.AI secured $3.5M in pre-Series A, led by Siana Capital, with participation from Kettleborough, Aroa Ventures, and HNI investors.

The funds will help scale:

• Engineering teams

• Platform capabilities

• Global partnerships

CEO Rajiv Srivastava says CoreOps is enabling enterprises to modernise 2X faster, cut operational costs by up to 25%, and embed autonomous intelligence into their workflows.

As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, CoreOps is positioning itself as a backbone operating system for AI deployment at scale.

TIDA Sports Raises ₹3 Cr to Expand Multi-Sports Coaching Nationwide

India’s sports education market is expanding rapidly, and TIDA Sports is catching that wave.

The multi-sport coaching platform raised ₹3 crore in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures, aiming to:

• Expand to 30 cities across 5 states

• Partner with 200 schools

• Impact over 1 lakh students

• Strengthen tech and B2B operations

Operating across Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Haryana, TIDA works closely with schools such as GD Goenka, DPS, DAV, and Aravali—bringing structured training, tournaments, coaches, and venues under a unified model.

SpinItUp Raises ₹50 Lakh to Power DJ-Commerce and Nightlife Creators

Music-tech startup SpinItUp raised ₹50 lakh in a pre-seed round led by Zee TV Ideabaaz Titans and investors including Jimmy Mistry and Anupam Bansal.

Valued at ₹10 crore, the company plans to:

• Improve its platform architecture

• Expand its team across tech, product, and growth

• Accelerate creator acquisition

• Build pan-India presence across nightlife hubs

SpinItUp aims to become India’s largest marketplace and ecosystem for DJs and music creators—connecting gigs, tools, and commerce in one place.

A Snapshot of an Ecosystem in Motion

From AI to sports, from fintech to commerce, from policy shifts to high-stakes investor moves—December 4 offered a microcosm of India’s startup landscape in 2025: dynamic, diverse, and deeply ambitious.

Startups are evolving, investors are recalibrating, founders are adapting, and the government is being pushed to create more inclusive, resilient frameworks.

If today’s stories reflect anything, it’s that India’s innovation economy continues to move at a pace that demands attention—not just in moments of big milestones, but in the everyday churn of progress.