Bengaluru-based AI startup Astra, which branded itself as the “Chief of Staff for every Account Executive,” has shut down operations, less than a year after its founding in 2023. The company’s cofounder and CEO, Supreet Hegde, made the announcement via a LinkedIn post, citing strategic misalignment with cofounder Ranjan Rajagopalan as one of the reasons for the decision.
“Despite our best efforts, as co-founders, we found ourselves at different crossroads regarding the pace of growth,” Hegde wrote. Both founders are alumni of IIT Madras. While Hegde’s future plans remain undisclosed, Rajagopalan is reportedly building a new startup currently in stealth mode.
Enterprise adoption a key challenge
Beyond internal friction, Astra also struggled to secure sustained trust from enterprise clients. The startup’s platform, designed to automate up to 80% of an Account Executive’s tasks and enhance salesforce effectiveness, required access to sensitive data across tools such as Salesforce, Google Drive, Slack, and contract lifecycle management platforms.
“Working with larger companies meant navigating lengthy sales cycles… clients were unsure of whom to trust or how to evaluate these AI agents,” Hegde noted. The recent proliferation of AI agents further complicated customer acquisition, as buyers remained cautious amid overlapping solutions and unclear differentiation.
Despite investor backing, platform remained in beta
Earlier this year, Astra raised capital from Perplexity AI cofounder Aravind Srinivas. At the time, Hegde called Srinivas “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time,” and expressed confidence in building “the world’s best AI Sales Agent.”
Despite these ambitions, Astra never scaled beyond beta. While the company claimed to have onboarded two enterprise clients and faced no direct competitors, its offerings remained limited to a test phase.
Part of a broader AI startup reset
Astra’s closure adds to the growing list of early-stage AI ventures struggling to maintain momentum amid a cooling investment climate and rising execution challenges. Earlier this month, another AI SaaS firm, Subtl.ai, also wound down operations, citing a funding crunch and tepid investor interest. Both startups had positioned themselves in the AI agent category, Astra for sales enablement and Subtl for automating customer query redressal, but failed to convert early traction into scale.