AI startup Rocket offers vibe McKinsey-style reports at a fraction of the cost

Indian startup Rocket is betting the next big opportunity is the pre-vibe-coding part: AI helping people decide what to build. It has launched a platform that produces consultancy-style product strategies.

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

As AI-powered coding tools proliferate—from platforms like Cursor, Replit, and Lovable to features like Claude Code and Codex—writing code has become significantly easier and faster. “Anyone can generate the code now… it’s become a commodity. But what you have to build is something that everyone is missing,” says Rocket co-founder and CEO Vishal Virani (pictured above), adding that “running a business and just building a codebase are two different things.”

TechCrunch briefly tested Rocket’s platform prior to launch and found that it generated product requirements documents in PDF format based on simple prompts. These documents are more like consulting-style reports than coding tools or chatbots, which largely focus on features and execution.

However, some of the analysis appeared to be compiled from existing data – combining known pricing models, user behavior patterns and competitive insights – rather than being based on independently verifiable information. This suggests that users may still need to validate 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 uses more than 1,000 data sources for its analysis, including Meta’s ad libraries, Similarweb’s API and its own crawlers, Virani said.

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

The $250 plan can generate two to three “McKinsey-grade” research reports in addition to product developments, Virani told TechCrunch, positioning its higher-end offering as a lower-cost alternative to traditional consulting, which often costs thousands of dollars for similar strategy work.

Rocket raised a $15 million seed round in September from Accel, Salesforce Ventures and Together Fund. Since then, the startup has grown from 400,000 to more than 1.5 million users in 180 countries. It also reported average annualized revenue per user of about $4,000, although it did not reveal detailed paying customer numbers. The startup said it operates with gross margins of more than 50%, with 20-30% of its customers being small and medium businesses.

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