Indian AI Startup Emergent Launches Messaging-First Autonomous AI Agent Wingman

Emergent, the Indian startup best recognized for its vibe-coding platform, has officially unveiled Wingman: a new messaging-first autonomous AI agent. The launch marks the company’s expansion into the fast-growing niche of background task automation software, a category popularized by leading tools like OpenClaw and Anthropic’s Claude.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, Emergent first rose to prominence for its vibe-coding platform, which competes directly with popular developer tools such as Cursor and Replit. The platform empowers users without formal technical training to build and deploy full-stack applications using simple natural-language prompts. With Wingman, the startup is pushing beyond software creation into task execution, with a core goal of letting AI agents handle routine work across a user’s existing tools and cross-functional workflows.

“The obvious next step for us was asking: can we help users not just build their software, but actually operate through it more autonomously?” said Mukund Jha, co-founder and CEO of Emergent. “You evolve from software that supports your business to software that actively helps run it.”

To date, more than 8 million creators have used Emergent’s vibe-coding platform to build and launch custom software, giving the startup a monthly active user base of over 1.5 million. Founded in 2025, the company closed a $70 million funding round in January that valued it at $300 million, with backing from prominent investors including SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Wingman is designed to operate natively through common messaging platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram, letting users assign tasks and track their progress directly through familiar chat interfaces. The agent runs in the background across all connected tools, from email and calendars to core workplace software. While it can complete routine, low-stakes actions autonomously, the system will prompt users for explicit approval before taking any high-impact, consequential steps, the startup confirmed.

Wingman’s launch comes as autonomous AI agents have emerged as one of the most competitive new frontiers in the global AI industry, with a growing number of companies racing to build tools that can complete end-to-end tasks on a user’s behalf. Early projects like OpenClaw — previously known by the names Clawdbot and Moltbot — have already gained significant traction among early adopters, while major industry players including Anthropic and Microsoft are developing their own agent-based systems to capture share of this emerging market.

Emergent is aiming to differentiate Wingman from competing tools by embedding it directly into everyday messaging platforms: WhatsApp, Telegram, and Apple’s iMessage, allowing users to interact with the agent via familiar chat interfaces instead of forcing adoption of an entirely new standalone interface. The startup has also built in what it calls “trust boundaries”, a framework that lets the agent handle routine work independently while requiring user approval for higher-stakes actions, a design choice meant to address widespread concerns about unregulated fully autonomous systems.

Jha told TechCrunch the decision to build Wingman around existing messaging platforms was driven by how people already structure their work. “A lot of real work already happens through chat, voice, and email — asking for something to get done, following up, sharing context, making a decision,” Jha said. “Increasingly, those will be the main ways we work with agents too.”

Like most early-generation autonomous AI agents, Wingman still faces notable limitations. Jha acknowledged that the system struggles to maintain consistency when navigating highly ambiguous situations, messy edge cases, unclear goals, or workflows that require significant human judgment.

Wingman is rolling out first with a limited free trial for early users. After the trial period, access will shift to a paid model, and existing Emergent platform users can access the agent directly through their existing accounts.