The market research boom is creating an unexpected casualty: the agencies themselves. In an industry where clients expect faster turnarounds, competitive pricing, and diverse capabilities, agencies are turning down work – not for lack of interest, but because outdated operational systems keep them from meeting client expectations.
Metaforms, a startup born from this bottleneck, is helping research teams scale without burning out. Today, the company announces a $9 million Series A to expand its AI infrastructure platform and accelerate adoption across the $130 billion global market research industry.
The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India), with participation from Nexus Venture Partners and Together Fund.
The funding will primarily fuel Metaforms' aggressive hiring plans in India, with the company set to triple its Bengaluru-based engineering and AI research teams, expand into new workflows like report generation and voice-based research, and deepen integrations with tools like Decipher, SPSS, and Confirmit.
"We're thrilled to partner with Akshat and Arjun as they reimagine what a market research agency could look like in an AI-first world. Metaforms is scaling rapidly by enabling some of the largest research agencies globally to automate workflows such as survey programming and data processing through their suite of AI agents," said Shailendra Singh, MD, Peak XV Partners.
Founded in 2022 by Akshat Tyagi and Arjun S, Metaforms addresses a critical bottleneck in the global market research industry. When multinational companies like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, or Tata need to understand consumer preferences across markets, research agencies often struggle with manual, time-intensive processes that limit their capacity to serve clients.
The company's AI agents automate survey programming, data processing, and vendor coordination, enabling agencies to handle exponentially more projects while maintaining quality.
Since launching commercially just six months ago, Metaforms has signed four of the world's top twenty research agencies, including Strat7, and serves Fortune 500 companies.
The platform now processes over 1,000 surveys per month and has achieved a 100% customer expansion rate – every client that started with one AI agent has adopted additional capabilities.
This traction has caught investor attention across the ecosystem. "They're solving a major pain point for the entire industry. That focus and ability to deeply understand customer needs and address that using generative AI is the hallmark of the Metaforms team. We are thrilled to back Akshat and Arjun in their journey of building a remarkable company!" said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners.
"Metaforms is a breakout example of the India-to-global play in AI," said Manav Garg, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Together Fund. "They're not just automating tasks — they're rebuilding research infrastructure for the modern era."
The impact extends beyond operational efficiency. By compressing turnaround times and reducing costs, Metaforms enables agencies to serve clients they would otherwise turn away, from early-stage startups testing their first ideas to global brands launching multi-country trackers.
Looking ahead, Metaforms plans to continue expanding the breadth of its agent capabilities. Voice research, automated report generation, and expanded language support are all on the roadmap, with the long-term vision to process over 100,000 surveys per year.
"When research agencies grow, better business decisions get made," said Akshat Tyagi, co-founder and CEO of Metaforms. "We're not here to replace the humans in the loop. We're here to give them leverage."
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