Rocket.new, one of India’s first vibe-coding startups, snags $15M from Accel, Salesforce Ventures

Rocket.new, an innovative startup from India, has successfully secured $15 million in a seed funding round led by Salesforce Ventures. This funding aims to propel Rocket.new into a competitive position against coding solutions like Lovable, Cursor, and Bolt by empowering users to create full-scale production apps using natural language prompts, extending beyond quick prototype generation.

The seed round was an all-equity raise and included contributions from Accel and Together Fund, following just three months after the platform’s beta launch in June.

In a rapid ascent since its inception, Rocket.new has reached a user base of over 400,000 — including more than 10,000 paid subscribers — across 180 countries, generating an annual recurring revenue of $4.5 million. Co-founder and CEO Vishal Virani revealed plans to escalate revenue to between $20 million and $25 million by year-end and to an ambitious $60 million to $70 million by mid-next year.

Headquartered in Surat, which is primarily known for its diamond and textile industries rather than tech innovation, Virani partnered with Rahul Shingala and Deepak Dhanak to launch Rocket.new. This venture signifies a significant shift from their previous startup, DhiWise, which was focused on improving developer workflows.

“Our aim is to offer a platform that not only addresses initial development hurdles but also tackles ongoing challenges post-launch,” stated Virani in an exclusive discussion with TechCrunch.

The startup, still in its early stages just 16 weeks post-launch, envisions itself as a holistic agentic system. This platform intends to leverage AI for not just app and website development, but also for in-depth competitive analysis and product innovation, potentially replacing the traditional needs of product managers.

“Our agentic system will provide a robust framework for organizations, enabling them to manage functions surrounding their products efficiently through simple natural-language commands,” Virani emphasized.

The platform, currently in what Virani calls version 0.3, has already facilitated the creation of approximately half a million applications, attracting a diverse array of users including product managers, solo entrepreneurs, and front-end developers. Notable users hail from major companies like Meta, PayPal, KPMG, PwC, and Times Internet, who utilize the platform for individual projects.

An impressive 80% of Rocket.new’s users are actively engaged in creating what Virani classifies as “serious” applications, rather than merely landing pages or branding sites. Among those, around 12% are developing e-commerce platforms, with a focus on grocery and apparel, 10% are building fintech applications, 5% to 6% are focused on creating B2B tools, and 4% to 5% are dedicated to mental health applications, according to Virani.

Currently, 45% of users of Rocket.new are engaged in building mobile applications, while 55% focus on web development. Virani noted that many users initiate website projects on platforms like Lovable or Replit before transitioning to Rocket.new for generating native mobile apps using their existing Supabase backend integration.

The platform integrates large language models from notable companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google’s Gemini with its proprietary deep learning architecture, developed on custom datasets derived from DhiWise.

“Our foundational technology is uniquely built, setting us distinctly apart from competitors like Lovable and Bolt,” Virani asserted during his remarks to TechCrunch.

While generating the first application can take around 25 minutes — a longer duration compared to typical vibe-coding tools that yield results in approximately three minutes — preliminary tests on Rocket.new have shown a richer user experience with all critical modules included.

Rocket.new offers a capped free trial allowing up to one million tokens. Following the trial, users can opt for a monthly subscription beginning at $25 for five million tokens.

This pricing structure is designed to deter casual hobbyists while enabling Rocket.new to maintain a healthy gross margin of 50% to 55%, with aspirations to increase this to 60% to 70% in the coming months.

The U.S. market stands as Rocket.new’s primary revenue source, accounting for 26% of total income, followed by Europe which contributes between 15% to 20%, and India at about 10%. To better cater to its American audience, Rocket.new is in the process of establishing a headquarters in Palo Alto.

Virani highlighted that the company’s initial growth has been largely organic, fueled by word-of-mouth and viral social media activity. With the new injection of seed funding, Rocket.new plans to refine its marketing strategies, enhance its footprint in key regions, and accelerate the development of proprietary models and research efforts.

“We identified a significant disconnect between the allure of AI-driven code generation and the actualities of making that code viable for production,” commented Kartik Gupta, an investor at Salesforce Ventures, regarding Rocket.new’s mission. “Rocket.new is strategically designed to bridge the gaps in iteration, maintenance, and enterprise-level deployment.”

Currently, Rocket.new boasts a dedicated team of 58 members, primarily based in Surat, with plans to double its engineering and product personnel in India within the next year to sustain and facilitate its growth trajectory.