Former Swiggy and Zomato executives Anuj Rathi and Prashant Parashar have launched Profound.me, an AI-native professional networking platform, securing $1.5 million in a seed round led by Stellaris Venture Partners and 3one4 Capital.

At the heart of Profound’s offering is the “AI Rep,” a voice-first career companion designed to help professionals present their experience more dynamically than a static resume allows. The tool aims to connect users directly with recruiters and surface opportunities that traditional job platforms and LinkedIn-style networking often miss.

The startup positions itself as a rethink of professional networking for an AI-first era, betting that voice and conversational interfaces can capture nuance and context that text-based profiles cannot. Rather than competing purely on job listings, Profound is framing itself as an always-on advocate that represents a professional’s career story to the market.

The fresh funding will go toward scaling Profound’s engineering and AI teams as it builds out the product. The company has set an ambitious target of onboarding 1 million professionals within the next year – a scale-up goal backed by a notable roster of angel investors, including Swiggy CEO Sriharsha M., CRED founder Kunal Shah, and Razorpay co-founder Harshil Mathur, among others.

The founding duo’s pedigree – both coming from leadership roles at two of India’s biggest consumer internet companies – adds credibility to Profound’s ambitions in a crowded professional networking space still largely dominated by LinkedIn. Whether an AI-driven, voice-first approach can meaningfully disrupt that dynamic will be the story to watch as Profound scales toward its first million users.