Premium analogue watch startup Rotoris has raised $3 million (around Rs 27 crore) in a seed funding round co-led by Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, early-stage investors Venture Catalysts and 100Unicorns, along with actor-investor Vivek Oberoi and content creator Tanmay Bhat.
The round drew participation from more than 30 startup founders and angel investors, including Honasa Consumer CEO Varun Alagh, Noise founder Gaurav Khatri, OfBusiness co-founder Nitin Jain, Shiprocket co-founder Vishesh Khurana, Snitch founder Siddharth Dungarwal, GoKwik’s Chirag Taneja, Zypp Electric’s Akash Gupta and Dr Vaidya’s Arjun Vaidya.
About Rotoris
Founded earlier this year, Rotoris is promoted by Bella Vita Organic founder Aakash Anand, along with Prerna Gupta, founding partner at Wolfpack Labs, and entrepreneurs Anant Narula and Kunal Kapania. The company is positioning itself as an engineering-led analogue watch brand, with a focus on mechanical movements and in-house assembly, aiming to build what it calls “India’s first global watch brand”.
The startup plans to deploy the capital towards strengthening manufacturing and assembly capabilities, investing in product engineering, expanding supply-chain partnerships and building initial inventory. A portion of the funds will also be used to hire across product, design and brand functions. Rotoris is also preparing to open its first physical “experience store” in New Delhi, which will double up as a retail and brand showcase space.
When is Rotoris launching?
Rotoris is scheduled to launch commercially in January 2026 with five collections—Auriqua, Monarch, Astonia, Arvion and Manifesta. The watches will feature sapphire crystal glass, 316L stainless steel cases, and a mix of automatic and quartz movements. Each model, the company said, will be released in limited, numbered editions.
While Anand is no stranger to building D2C consumer brands, having scaled Bella Vita Organic, Rotoris marks a strategic reset after the shutdown of his earlier AI-led social networking venture, Unikon.ai. The startup, which burned close to Rs 2 crore a month at its peak, wound down operations within a year of launch despite raising nearly $3 million from investors, including Kamath and Lenskart founder Peyush Bansal.
The pivot back to consumer products has seen Unikon Innovations Pvt. Ltd., the parent entity of Unikon.ai, now house Rotoris as its core business.
As per Inc 42 reports, India’s watch market is estimated to see robust growth, given the $300 billion growth expected in the overall D2C space by 2030. The premium and luxury segments are projected to growat 10–14% annually over the next 5 years, driven by rising disposable incomes, fashion-led consumption and premiumisation.