October was a month of contrasts for the Indian startup ecosystem. While AI, deeptech and advanced manufacturing continued to attract significant investor capital, a series of cybersecurity incidents and regulatory actions highlighted the risks and responsibilities that come with scaling digital businesses.

The month saw India’s cybersecurity watchdog CERT-In flag unauthorised access to Indian organisations’ live systems by AI agents under evaluation, alongside the use of agentic tools in financially motivated cyberattacks. 

Digital trust company eMudhra faced a major security setback after researchers recovered eight weak private keys from publicly available certificates, prompting Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft to distrust the affected certificates.

Meanwhile, IRDAI’s proposed insurance commission caps raised concerns among distributors and brokers, with industry representatives warning of significant revenue and employment implications. 

Together, these developments underscored the mounting compliance, data security and governance challenges confronting India’s digital businesses.

Amid this, venture capital interest in the ecosystem took a slight hit. Indian startups raised over $686 Mn across 104 funding deals in October, down almost 10% MoM from September’s $760.7 Mn. AI remained a major funding theme, while capital also flowed into spacetech, defence, semiconductors and industrial automation.

The public markets remained active, with four new-age tech companies making their debuts during the month. Zetwerk, Tonbo Imaging, Moneyview and Snapdeal parent AceVector made their market debuts, while Cult.fit and Atomberg received SEBI’s approval for their respective IPOs. 

Against this backdrop of funding momentum, public-market activity and growing regulatory scrutiny, Inc42 is back with the latest edition of its flagship ‘ 30 Startups To Watch ’ series, spotlighting early-stage ventures that stood out to us in October.

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