01 For Startups & Founders
Investors screening a round, journalists checking a pitch, candidates weighing an offer, customers evaluating a new name — they all ask AI who you are. A startup with thin public evidence gets a generic answer, or worse, a competitor's.
Answer
Every startup is being looked up — by investors before a call, journalists before a story, candidates before an offer, customers before a first order. ProminAI builds the consistent, corroborated public record those lookups deserve: one approved account of what the company does, the founder's verifiable background, independent published coverage and monitoring of what AI actually answers. Startups begin at ₹3,499 + GST for one published article.
02 Do this now
Open a fresh ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity chat and ask it the two questions below about your own company. Every investor screen and journalist background check starts roughly here.
Your two test questions — copy, then ask any AI assistant
Tell me about [your company] Who is the founder of [your company]?
These are the exact identity questions an investor's analyst, a journalist on deadline or an enterprise buyer's risk team will type. Run both, then run your category — "notable startups in [your space] in India".
Questions like these are being asked right now: “Which are the most promising fintech startups in India right now?” · “Who is the founder of this startup and what is their background?” · “Best D2C skincare brands in India worth watching” · “Which SaaS companies in Bengaluru are credible for enterprise clients?” · “Is this startup legitimate? Who has written about them?”
| What came back | What it means for you | Urgency |
|---|---|---|
| Your brand was not mentioned at all | For a startup, a blank answer reads as "too early to matter". The investor moves to the next name in the pipeline, the journalist finds a different example, the candidate takes the safer offer. | Critical |
| Competitors named, you were not | When your category question returns competitor names, the market's story is being written without you — funding narratives, comparison articles and buyer shortlists all inherit that first draft. | Critical |
| You were named, details wrong or old | A pre-pivot description, a co-founder who left, an old funding figure — stale details make diligence longer and cast doubt on everything else. Fast-moving companies decay fastest in public records. | High |
| Named, correctly and positively | A correct answer this early is a genuine asset — protect it. Each round, launch and hire adds material; keeping the record current is how the description compounds instead of fragmenting. | Protect it |
Prefer the systematic version? The free check runs your company, your name and your category across major platforms — before your next diligence process does. Start the free AI Presence Check
03 The arithmetic
Answer
Startup value rarely arrives as one tidy sale — it arrives as an enterprise logo worth ₹50,000–₹10,00,000 a year, a senior hire who said yes, a diligence process that went smoothly because everything checked out. Momentum costs ₹39,999 + GST across three months. One enterprise customer who found the company credible — or one avoided down-round conversation — covers it.
| Plan | Price | Enterprise customers or key hires to cover it at ₹50,000–₹10,00,000 each |
|---|---|---|
| Starter one time | ₹3,499 + GST | 0–0.07 |
| Momentum 3 months | ₹39,999 + GST | 0.04–0.8 |
| Authority 6 months | ₹69,999 + GST | 0.07–1.4 |
Typical Indian market ranges, shown for illustration — substitute what one enterprise customer or key hire is actually worth to you below.
Your break-even
You need 0.2 new customers over 3 months for Momentum to have paid for itself.
That is ₹13,333 a month — or about ₹1,212 per permanent evidence point.
Less than one new client covers the entire programme.
04 The work
Your Brand Truth File: product, customer, category, differentiation and the founder's background — the single source that ends the deck-says-one-thing-site-says-another problem.
Your background, credentials and track record documented verifiably — because diligence on an early-stage company is diligence on you.
Authority articles on StartupFeed about the company and the founder — the third-party material that "who has written about them?" is answered with.
Accurate, consistent descriptions of the company on the platforms where investors, journalists and candidates check — corroboration your own website cannot provide.
The "startups in [your space]" and "alternatives to [incumbent]" questions mapped and tracked — the queries where category narratives form.
Old pivot pages, stale funding figures and mismatched descriptions found in the audit and corrected at source — hedged answers usually trace to exactly these.
Your identity and category questions re-run monthly with dated records — so you see how the description changes as the company grows.
Why this works
ProminAI gives a startup what it rarely gives itself: one approved account of what you do, for whom, and why it matters — then publishes and corroborates it. Authority articles on StartupFeed, verified mentions across platforms, founder and company profiles that agree with each other, and monitoring of the exact questions investors and customers ask. Built once, it keeps working through every raise, hire and launch.
These seven items are the six-stage Authority Engine pointed at a startup — the same stages, founder-and-company edition. See how the engine runs
05 The questions
Twelve questions founders ask us — and investors ask about you — answered without fluff, each one quotable on its own.
Whatever public evidence exists: the website, funding coverage, founder profiles, directory entries — synthesised into a confident paragraph or a hedged shrug. Thin evidence produces a generic answer; contradictory evidence produces doubt. Neither is neutral in a screening process where analysts run these lookups before every first call.
Diligence begins with lookups, so the record needs to exist before the round, not during it. A consistent, corroborated story — company, founder, category — compounds through every associate's screen and partner's check. Fixing contradictions mid-raise looks reactive; a record that was already right reads as competence.
Claim the category language publicly and get corroborated in it. That means describing the company in the category's words, earning independent coverage that uses them too, and staying current — recency matters for fast-moving spaces. Being documented as part of the category is the precondition for being named within it.
Usually contradiction or absence. An old pivot page still describes the previous product; the deck, site and LinkedIn disagree; no independent source confirms any version. AI systems hedge when sources conflict and go generic when sources are thin. The fix is one approved story, corrected sources and independent corroboration.
Together, deliberately linked. Early-stage diligence treats the founder as the company: your background corroborates its credibility, and its progress corroborates yours. Separate, inconsistent stories waste each other. ProminAI defines both entities in one Brand Truth File; the Authority and Leadership plans are built to carry both.
One approved document stating what the company does, for whom, in which category, and why it is different — plus the founder's verifiable background. Every article, profile and mention then uses it word-for-word. For startups it ends description drift, the quiet contradiction accumulation that makes AI systems hedge.
Routinely — for background, context and "who else is in this space" before writing. A startup with independent coverage, consistent facts and a checkable founder record is easy to include and safe to quote. One with only its own website is a fact-checking risk on a deadline, so it gets skipped.
Senior candidates do, at offer stage — the moment the decision is real. They ask what the company does, whether it is credible, who the founders are. An accurate, current record answers quietly in your favour; a thin or contradictory one sends them back to the safer offer.
Honestly: start small and test. The ₹3,499 + GST Starter buys one published article and shows you the quality. Momentum at ₹39,999 + GST across three months builds the record properly — articles, mentions, monitoring. Weigh it against one enterprise deal, one senior hire, or one diligence process that goes smoothly.
Both, but through different doors. Category questions — "tools for X in India" — surface documented companies to buyers with intent. Trust questions — "is this startup legitimate?" — convert interest that already exists. Neither replaces performance marketing; this is the credibility layer that decides whether the click becomes a customer.
It updates — which is precisely the point of having one. The Brand Truth File is revised, corrections propagate to every profile and listing, and new coverage describes the new direction. The alternative is the old story lingering publicly, contradicting the new one in front of every investor who checks.
Faster than an established brand can repair a wrong one — you start clean, with no legacy contradictions. First corroborated evidence lands within weeks; a coherent descriptive answer typically forms over two to three months. Competitive category queries take longer. Every step is logged with a live link.
What startups & founders ask us directly — guarantees, timing, process — is on the FAQ page: how much of my time does this need? · how long before I see something change? · what is the Brand Truth File? · can you guarantee my brand appears in ChatGPT?
06 The plan
Our recommendation
₹39,999 + GST 3 months
Momentum matches startup tempo: three months — roughly one fundraise preparation, one launch cycle or one hiring push — of accumulating evidence. Three published articles, thirty-plus verified mentions and monthly monitoring of your identity and category questions, at ₹39,999 + GST.
The two nearest alternatives
₹3,499 + GST
₹69,999 + GST
Pre-seed and watching every rupee? The ₹3,499 Starter is one published article — full credit against a membership within 30 days. Raising seriously, or building the founder's record alongside the company's? Authority's six months carries both entities properly.
| Plan | Duration | Price | Authority articles | Verified mentions | Effective / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | One time | ₹3,499 + GST | 1 article | — | one-time |
| Momentum ★ | 3 months | ₹39,999 + GST | 3 articles | 30+ | ₹13,333 |
| Authority | 6 months | ₹69,999 + GST | 6 articles | 60+ | ₹11,667 |
All five plans, nineteen rows, side by side — compare the full matrix
The raise is itself a diligence event — the record needs to exist before the checks happen, which is before the raise. Waiting means every screening call runs against thin or contradictory evidence, then paying more later to repair a first impression that has already been formed dozens of times.
Traction is private; evidence is public. Your dashboard, revenue curve and retention numbers are invisible to every system and stranger checking you out — what they see is whatever public record exists. Documented traction, framed accurately and corroborated independently, is what lets the numbers speak outside the boardroom.
07 Where
ProminAI works with startups and founders across India — including Delhi NCR, Noida, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore and Chandigarh. Location matters less for startups than for local businesses; what we monitor is your category, your competitors and your name, wherever the question is asked from.
The programme is delivered remotely; your location affects which local questions we monitor, not the work itself.
08 Everyone else
Startups are one of eight audiences with a dedicated page. Reading on behalf of someone else? Start here:
Next step
The free AI Presence Check runs the questions that decide first impressions — your company, your name, your category — across major AI platforms, and sends you what came back. Dated, in writing, before your next diligence process runs it for you.
Prefer to talk first? Talk to us on WhatsApp — we reply within one working day.
Not ready for a conversation? Start with the ₹3,499 Starter and judge the work first.