CogNerd Press Releases

What NVIDIA Inception offers

NVIDIA describes Inception as a free program that supports AI startups from early product development through growth. Its published member opportunities include technical training, developer tools, selected hardware and software offers, partner benefits and investor exposure for eligible companies. Membership does not itself mean that NVIDIA has invested in a startup or that every advertised benefit has been granted to it.

The value of a technical ecosystem is learning as much as access. AI applications change quickly: model capabilities evolve, infrastructure choices affect cost and speed, and new tools can alter what a team is able to build. A startup needs to make those choices while keeping the customer's actual problem in view. Inception gives CogNerd a place to follow that technical landscape and evaluate relevant resources as its product develops.

CogNerd's measurement challenge

CogNerd is building for a question that has become more urgent as AI assistants influence discovery. If a buyer asks for the best provider in a category, what brands are named? Which websites are cited? How is each company described, and does the answer change across different prompts or AI engines? A marketer cannot answer those questions with a conventional rank report alone.

The CogNerd platform tracks brand mentions, prompt coverage, citations and competitors across AI search experiences. Its AI readiness and content workflows help teams investigate why their presence may be weak and what they can improve. The goal is to connect observation to action: a missing mention may point to unclear positioning, weak source coverage or content that does not answer the customer's question.

As the team builds those workflows, it has to balance breadth and clarity. More data is useful only if customers can tell what it means. CogNerd's approach is to present the evidence behind a visibility gap and make the next step understandable, whether that involves a product page, a sourced answer, structured information or a broader content opportunity.

The technical work behind useful visibility

Measuring AI answers is harder than counting a mention once. A business may be described differently by different engines, and two similar questions can produce different sets of recommendations. Sources may be cited in one answer and omitted in another. CogNerd has to collect and present those variations without pretending the underlying systems are perfectly stable. Its current product direction includes prompt intelligence, citation analysis, competitive visibility and repeat scans so teams can compare what changed.

That work makes a technical startup ecosystem relevant. Access to learning resources and developer tools can help a team evaluate new approaches as AI systems evolve. CogNerd's job, however, remains centered on the customer's decision: identify the most important visibility gaps and explain what evidence supports them.

About the program

Google for Startups runs programs that give founders access to Google's expertise in technology, product and growth. Immersion EMEA brings selected founders from Europe, the Middle East and Africa together for live masterclasses with Google experts, with time for founders to put their technical questions to them directly.

A place in the program is a selection, not an investment: it does not mean that Google or Antler has invested in CogNerd.

Why it matters for CogNerd

CogNerd measures how brands appear in answers from AI assistants, including Google's Gemini and AI Overviews, alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity and others. It tracks which brands are mentioned and cited, which competitors appear instead and which sources shape the answers, and connects that to traditional search data.

Selection for a Google for Startups program places CogNerd among founders building on the same shift in how people search, and recognises the work the team has done to make AI visibility measurable.

What IMC Aspire brings together

Aspire brings startups into a larger technology gathering where product demonstrations, mentoring, industry conversations and investor engagement can take place. Its official program describes showcases, workshops and opportunities for founders to meet people across the technology ecosystem. Selection creates a chance to put an emerging product and its underlying problem in front of an audience beyond its immediate customer base. The platform connects emerging companies with a national audience for their ideas and products.

For CogNerd, the fit is direct. Conversational systems have changed how people ask for information. Instead of typing a short keyword and comparing a list of pages, a buyer may ask an assistant to recommend software, explain a service or name a trusted provider. The answer can shape a decision before a visitor ever arrives at a brand's website. That is the shift CogNerd is working to measure.

CogNerd's view of discovery

CogNerd helps brands investigate what AI systems say about them across prompts and engines, which sources appear in answers, and which competitors are recommended instead. It brings together prompt intelligence, brand mentions, citations and competitive analysis, then ties those observations to content and website improvements. The platform is intended to make AI visibility a repeatable measurement problem, rather than a collection of one-off screenshots.

That problem is relevant to a wide technology audience. Product teams want to know how their companies are described. Marketing teams need to see where visibility is weak. Founders need to understand whether people asking for solutions in their category are hearing about them. CogNerd's presence at IMC gave the team a setting to explain these questions and learn how others are thinking about AI-led discovery.

Why this audience matters

India Mobile Congress brings together companies working across communication, software, infrastructure and emerging technology. In that environment, an AI search visibility platform can be discussed as more than a marketing dashboard. It raises questions about how information is found, which sources an AI system chooses to cite and how a business can make accurate information about itself easier to discover. Those questions matter to product builders as well as to brand teams.

For CogNerd, the value of being present is the chance to test whether its explanation of the problem resonates beyond the people already familiar with SEO or generative engine optimization. The company has built tools for tracking prompt performance, mentions, citations and competitor gaps. Talking about those capabilities in plain language helps expose where the product is clear and where it still needs work.

About the Women Startup Program

NSRCEL is IIM Bangalore's centre for entrepreneurship and incubation. Its Women Startup Program supports ventures led by women founders, and its Incubation stage is meant for companies that already have a working product and have started engaging customers or generating revenue.

Places in the Incubation stage are awarded after a competitive review. NSRCEL described this year's submissions and pitches as exceptional, and selected the cohort after evaluating them over more than a month.

Why CogNerd was selected

CogNerd is an AI search visibility platform. It shows brands where they appear in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, which competitors are recommended instead, and which sources shape those answers, then turns the gaps into content and website improvements.

The platform is live and in use by brands, which meets the bar the Incubation stage sets. Sakshi Dhawan, PhD, co-founded CogNerd with Aman Mundra and brings research into human behavior and decision-making to a product built around how people ask AI systems for recommendations.

What the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme supports

The Startup India Seed Fund Scheme was created to help eligible startups move through the expensive steps between an idea and a product that customers can use. Its stated purposes include proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market entry and commercialization. Startups are selected and supported through approved incubators rather than receiving funding through a general public grant process. Innovation Mission Punjab describes SISFS as one of the initiatives through which it supports early-stage ventures in the state.

For a young software company, that structure matters. Product assumptions need to be tested, measurement methods need to be repeatable, and early users need to see enough value to keep using a product. A seed award can make room for that work before the business has reached the scale expected by larger investors. The award through IMPunjab places CogNerd among the early-stage startups supported by the program as it moves from product development toward wider adoption.

The problem CogNerd is building for

CogNerd was founded by Aman Mundra and Sakshi Dhawan, PhD, bringing together production AI engineering and research into human behavior. The team is building an AI search visibility platform for brands that need to understand a changing discovery journey. A buyer can ask ChatGPT, Gemini or another answer engine to compare providers and receive a recommendation without seeing a conventional search results page. A strong search ranking alone cannot tell a marketing team how that conversation represented its brand.

CogNerd measures the prompts customers ask, whether a brand is mentioned or cited, which competitors appear alongside it, and what sources are shaping the response. Its wider platform connects those signals to website readiness, content opportunities and search analytics. The aim is to help a team move from a vague concern about being invisible in AI answers to a specific question it can investigate and improve.

What DPIIT recognition means

Startup India sets eligibility criteria for companies seeking DPIIT recognition, including the nature of the entity, its age and its focus on innovation or a scalable business model. Recognition confirms a company's status under that framework. It can also be a prerequisite for applying to certain startup programs, but each grant, tax benefit or other incentive has its own conditions and approval process.

For CogNerd, the certificate is a company milestone rather than a claim that a specific financial benefit has been received. It places the venture within an ecosystem intended to help innovative businesses develop, connect and grow.

The business problem behind CogNerd

Search has become harder to measure from a brand's point of view. Traditional tools can show where a page ranks and how many visitors arrive. They do not fully reveal the answer a person receives after asking an AI assistant to compare vendors or recommend a service. The customer may never see a list of ten links, yet the answer can still shape who they consider.

CogNerd helps teams inspect that newer path to discovery. It tracks the prompts people ask, whether a brand appears or is cited, how competitors are represented and where useful sources are missing. The platform also links those observations to AI readiness, content and search work, so teams can decide what to change and check the result later.

This is a practical problem for companies of many sizes. A founder wants to know if buyers asking about a category encounter the company. A marketer wants to see whether content improvements affect visibility. A business leader wants evidence before investing more time in a new channel. CogNerd is building the measurement layer to make those decisions less speculative.

Why the recognition fits the company's work

DPIIT recognition is especially relevant to a venture addressing a new market need. CogNerd is building around the observation that search discovery is changing faster than the tools many businesses use to measure it. Its platform brings together AI answer monitoring, citations, competitive signals, content opportunities and traditional search data so a team can see a more complete picture of how people find and evaluate a brand.

The company is also trying to make that picture useful beyond specialist SEO teams. A founder should be able to see whether the company appears when buyers ask about its category. An agency should be able to show a client which topics need better answers. A marketing team should be able to check whether changes to its content or website are followed by a shift in AI visibility. The recognition marks CogNerd's position within India's startup ecosystem as it works to turn those use cases into a reliable product.