Indian AI coding startup Cropper has raised $130 million in a Series C funding round at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion, a fivefold jump in six months.
The funding round was led by private equity firm Creaegis. Also participating were new investors MNI Ventures-Claypond, Sentinel Global and existing backers Khosla Ventures, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed and Y Combinator. The deal brings Emergent’s total funding to $230 million. The startup had previously raised a $70 million Series B round at a $300 million valuation in January.
AI coding has attracted hordes of investors, with startups like Lovable, Replit and Cursor raising billions in funding to develop tools that allow developers to speed up their work. AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have also pushed deeper into coding.
Emergent is looking to gain a share of this crowded market by targeting entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses and small and medium-sized companies that have traditionally relied on email, spreadsheets and messaging apps to get their work done.
“Our thesis has always been to build a production-grade app for serious manufacturers,” Emergent co-founder and CEO Mukund Jha (pictured above right) told TechCrunch. “So you basically get a team of engineers in a box.”
Jha said the startup has reached $120 million in annual revenue, up 70% in the past four months, and has more than 200,000 paying customers. Jha started Emergent with his brother Madhav Jha (CTO) last June.
Customers include trucking companies that make software to track shipments. factories; construction companies that build enterprise resource planning systems; and property managers that develop internal customer management tools.
North American customers account for about a third of Emergent’s revenue, Europe makes up another third, and the rest comes from other markets, Jha told TechCrunch. India accounts for about 8% to 9%.
Emergent’s focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs puts it directly against Replit, which Jha described as the startup’s closest rival. He sought to distinguish Emergent from developer-focused coding tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex, and Cursor, arguing that non-technical users need a platform that handles development, hosting, testing, and debugging alongside the work of programming.
However, Jha acknowledged that design remains a weakness, pointing out that many websites built with AI tools tend to look similar.
Emergent plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate product development and research, including improving the success rate of applications built on its platform and core AI agent workflows. The company is working to support more complex AI applications, including those using local and open-source models, Jha said, adding that it will also invest in expanding its market operations.
The company is also considering opening an office in Europe, where Jha said Emergent is seeing significant customer traction.
Emergent has about 200 employees, most of whom work in Bangalore, with a few in San Francisco. The startup plans to expand its San Francisco office by 30 to 40 people by the end of the year, Jha said.
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