thumpN raises $3.7M for an AI agent that finds live events by conversation, not search

An Indian startup called thumpN raised $3.75M in a pre-seed round and launched its live-events platform in public beta the week of July 6, 2026. The pitch: stop searching for concerts and start talking to an AI agent named Shadow, which finds events through conversation. The backers are the headline as much as the tech, with Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and singers Arijit Singh, Badshah, and Sunidhi Chauhan all writing checks.

How Shadow finds events without search

Shadow is the reason thumpN calls itself AI-native. Instead of typing keywords and filtering results, a fan describes what they want and Shadow reads the intent.

The example CEO Varun Khare gives: a fan can ask for “a stand-up show this weekend under Rs1,500” or “something fun for the family on Sunday,” and the platform understands context, taste, and budget. It weighs mood, genre, city, and price, then refines its picks as it learns your habits.

To seed those preferences, the beta asks users to rate 16 categories, from comedy and sports to genres like hip-hop, jazz, and Punjabi, with a Love, Like, or Curious tag on each.

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A ticket here is the beginning of a relationship, not the end of a checkout flow.

The other side: tools for event organisers

thumpN is not only a discovery app. It sells tickets on-platform and uses AI to spin up ready-to-sell event pages for organisers, who then get marketing help and sales data. A human curator can auto-create an event page in under 10 minutes.

Khare’s frustration was fragmentation. Event discovery in India is scattered across social feeds, WhatsApp groups, and word of mouth, and thumpN wants to be the single layer over all of it. The company plans an organiser insights dashboard soon and expects those tools to lift both event listings and ticket sales, all bundled into its existing ticketing commission.

Why this matters for artists

thumpN is a live-music story, but the pattern is one to watch. AI is moving into the part of an artist’s career that has nothing to do with making the song: getting the right fans into the room.

The raise landed less than a month after a seed round for New Delhi distribution startup Madverse Music, part of a wider run of money into Indian music tech. India is one of the fastest-growing live markets, and Khare told Money Control he expects thumpN to take around 10% of the ticketed events market over time. That is a big claim for a beta, but the star backers and the broader push of AI into music discovery mean it is worth tracking.