NeoSapien Raises $2 Mn Seed Funding Backed by Anupam Mittal, Namita Thapar and Others

NeoSapien’s $2‑million seed round cements it as one of the most interesting deep‑tech bets in India’s emerging AI‑wearables wave, and builds directly on the visibility it gained earlier this year on Shark Tank India.

The new $2M seed round

• Round size & lead: NeoSapien has raised $2 million (~₹18 crore) in seed funding led by Merak Ventures, an early‑stage VC focused on B2B and emerging tech.​
• Angels participating: The round includes a strong angel bench – Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com), Namita Thapar (Emcure), Sameer Mehta (boAt), Awais Ahmed (Pixxel), Aprameya Radhakrishna (Koo) and others.​
• Use of funds: The company says it will use the capital to accelerate product development of Neo 1 and its NeoOS/NeoCore stack, grow market presence, and hire across engineering, design and go‑to‑market functions.​

Founders Dhananjay and Aryan Yadav describe the vision as building “technology that fades into the background so you can stay present,” offloading the cognitive load of remembering conversations, tracking commitments and piecing together information.​

Shark Tank India deal: the first external cheque

Before the VC round, NeoSapien broke out via Shark Tank India Season 4:

• On the show, the team pitched Neo 1 as India’s first AI‑native wearable pendant – a “second brain” that records and understands conversations, emotions and tasks.​
• They secured ₹80 lakh from Namita Thapar, at a valuation reported around ₹8 crore (exact terms vary by source), giving Thapar an early equity stake and mentorship role.​
• Other sharks, including Anupam Mittal and Sameer Mehta, later joined as advisors and angel investors off‑show, helping NeoSapien with hardware, brand and distribution expertise.​

That TV exposure not only funded initial production runs but also created an early adopter community and helped validate the “AI pendant” category in India.​

What Neo 1 actually is

Neo 1 is a small neck‑worn AI device (pendant) built from the ground up as a Personal AI Assistant (PAIA) or “second brain.”​

Key aspects:

• Always‑on ambient intelligence:
  • Designed to be always available, capturing conversations and context (with user control) and then reasoning over that history later, rather than just answering isolated prompts like a phone app.​
  • Builds persistent long‑term memory so it can remind you of follow‑ups, resurface earlier discussions, and connect dots across days or weeks.
• Language coverage:
  • Works across 100+ languages, including Indian languages such as Hindi, Hinglish, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati, and even non‑Indian languages like Mandarin.​
• Core features:
  • Real‑time conversation capture & transcription with a “Trust Light” that shows when recording is active, plus end‑to‑end encryption for privacy.​
  • Searchable memory: via the Neo app, users can query meetings, lectures or chats (“what did the client say about budget last Tuesday?”) and pull up the exact segment.​
  • Emotional and tone analysis: helps users understand sentiment in discussions and their own communication style.​
  • Task and commitment tracking: auto‑extracts to‑dos and reminders from conversations and organises them.​
  • Battery & form factor: pendant‑style accessory with 2–3 day battery life, designed to look like jewellery rather than a gadget.​

Neo 1 currently retails around ₹10,000 on NeoSapien’s site, aiming to be accessible relative to premium smartwatches while offering a very different value proposition.​

Why it’s considered “revolutionary”

NeoSapien is tapping into a new class of devices that go beyond watches and earbuds:

1. From reactive tools to proactive companions
   • Most consumer AI today is prompt‑based (you ask, it answers). Neo 1, as a PAIA, is built to observe in the background, remember, and then proactively help, similar to concepts like Humane AI Pin or Rewind‑style “memory” tools, but in a hardware‑integrated, India‑first form.​
2. Memory and cognition as the product
   • Instead of focusing on steps, heart‑rate or notifications, Neo 1’s “killer feature” is infinite, searchable memory plus contextual reasoning—offloading note‑taking, follow‑ups and recall so humans can focus on the interaction itself.​
3. Built for multilingual India
   • By supporting 100+ languages and explicitly targeting Indian regional languages, NeoSapien is trying to ensure non‑English users can benefit from frontier AI wearables from day one, not as an afterthought.​
4. Platform ambition: NeoOS & NeoCore
   • The founders say NeoSapien’s longer‑term goal is to build the “operating system layer for all AI assistants” – from glasses and pendants to watches and rings.​
   • Its NeoCore SDK is meant to let other companies build applications on top of this intelligence layer, effectively turning NeoSapien from a single gadget into an AI‑wearables platform.​
5. Privacy‑first stance
   • With rising concern around always‑listening devices, NeoSapien stresses that data is owned and controlled by the user, stored with encryption, and gated by visible recording indicators – an important differentiator as this category matures.​

Taken together, NeoSapien has moved from a Shark Tank‑stage prototype to a well‑funded deep‑tech startup with a live product, strong angel/VC backing and a clear bet on ambient, multilingual, privacy‑aware AI wearables—a space that could redefine how Indians interact with technology over the next decade.

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