Runable secures $21m to help small businesses grow with AI agents

Indian startup Runable has raised $21 million in Series A funding to expand its focus from building AI-powered websites and apps to helping small businesses grow. The round was co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Together Fund and Array VC. The all-equity funding valued Runable at $65 million post-money, according to co-founder and CEO Umesh Kumar. Founded in 2,025, Runable targets small businesses in a competitive market that includes AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as coding platforms such as Cursor, Lovable, and Replit. Runable’s AI agent is designed to find customers, run ad campaigns, create presentations, and promote businesses across search, social media, and AI chatbots. Kumar emphasized that businesses need real outcomes, not just AI tools, and that Runable aims to provide these at a lower cost than traditional agencies. The startup initially focused on AI infrastructure but pivoted after noticing users requested more than just data scraping, leading to the development of a general-purpose AI agent. Runable achieved a $2 million annualized revenue run rate within three weeks of launching payments in March. The platform now allows users to build websites, apps, and presentations using natural language prompts, while handling deployment and analytics. Runable is now expanding into the 'grow' side of the business, aiming to manage ad campaigns, SEO, and AI chatbot optimization. Kumar noted that Runable has 1.7 million registered users, with the U.S., UK, and Japan as its largest markets. While Kumar declined to disclose current revenue or paying customers, he highlighted that users consumed over 1 trillion tokens in the last 90 days, with 60-70% of that usage from paying customers. Runable currently faces negative gross margins due to subsidizing AI usage, but Kumar expects falling inference costs to improve economics. He argued that Runable’s advantage lies in handling infrastructure, analytics, and distribution without requiring users to integrate multiple services. In a test, Runable built a website for a fictional coffee subscription business and prepared an ad campaign but required an advertising account to proceed. Kumar stated that Runable is not competing with coding agents like Codex or Claude Code but instead targets non-technical small business owners. Competitors include general-purpose agents like Manus and Genspark, but Runable differentiates itself by focusing on customer acquisition rather than product creation.