AI startup Rocket delivers lively McKinsey-style reporting for a fraction of the cost

Indian startup Rocket is betting that the next big opportunity is the part before enthusiastic programming: getting artificial intelligence to help people decide what to build. It has launched a platform that produces advisory-style product strategies.

The startup, based in Surat, India, on Tuesday launched its Rocket 1.0 platform, which connects research, product building and competitive intelligence into a single workflow. The platform creates detailed product strategy documents – including pricing, unit economics, and go-to-market recommendations.

With the proliferation of AI-powered programming tools — from platforms like Cursor, Replit, and Lovable to features like Claude Code and Codex — writing code has become significantly easier and faster. “Everyone can build code now… it has become a commodity. But what to build is something everyone misses,” said Vishal Virani, co-founder and CEO of Rocket (pictured above), adding that “running a business and building a code base are two different things.”

TechCrunch briefly tested the Rocket platform before launch and found that it generated product requirements documents in PDF format with simple prompts. These documents resemble advisory-style reports rather than dynamic programming tools or chatbots, which are largely focused on features and implementation.

However, some analyzes appear to be compiled from existing data — combining known pricing models, user behavior patterns, and competitive insights — rather than relying on independently verifiable information. This suggests that users may still need to validate the output before making business decisions. Virani said the platform can provide human support when users encounter problems.

The product can also track competitors, including changes to their websites and traffic trends. Rocket relies on more than 1,000 data sources for its analysis, including Meta ad libraries, Sameweb’s API and its own crawlers, Virani said.

Rocket’s subscription plans range from $25 per month for building apps to $250 for strategy and research capabilities, and up to $350 for the full platform, including competitive intelligence.

The $250 plan can generate two or three McKinsey-class research reports along with product designs, positioning its higher-level offerings as a lower-cost alternative to traditional consulting, which often costs thousands of dollars for similar strategy work, Virani told TechCrunch.

Rocket raised a $15 million seed funding round in September from Accel, Salesforce Ventures, and Together Fund. Since then, the startup says it has grown from 400,000 to more than 1.5 million users in 180 countries. It also reported average annual revenue per user in the range of roughly $4,000, though it did not reveal detailed numbers for paying customers. The startup said it operates with a gross margin of more than 50%, and that 20-30% of its clients are small and medium-sized businesses.

Rocket has a team of 57 employees and is headquartered in Surat, with operations in Palo Alto.