thumpN, an India-based live entertainment discovery and ticketing platform, launched on July 6 with $3.75 million in pre-seed funding from investors including the family office of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Indian musicians. Founded by Varun Khare, former operations chief of Paytm Insider (acquired by Zomato in 2024), the startup centres its offering around Shadow, a conversational AI agent designed to learn individual preferences and recommend events tailored to user taste.

The platform enters a high-growth market where India stages over 40,000 live events annually across 319 cities, with the live entertainment segment expanding 44% year-on-year as of 2025. thumpN differentiates itself from established competitors by building discovery entirely around conversational AI rather than adding AI features to traditional search interfaces, aiming to consolidate event information currently scattered across social media, WhatsApp groups, and word-of-mouth channels into a unified platform.