Founded in 2025 by IIT Bombay alumni Dhruv Jaglan and Georgi Boby, Rilo built AI-powered tools to automate marketing and business workflows.
Adobe has acquired Indian AI startup Rilo less than a year after the company was founded, expanding the US software giant’s capabilities in AI-powered marketing automation and business workflows.
Adobe confirmed the acquisition but did not disclose the financial terms. The deal marks Adobe’s second known acquisition of an Indian startup, following its 2023 purchase of Bengaluru-based generative AI video company Rephrase.ai.
Rilo was founded in September 2025 by IIT Bombay alumni Dhruv Jaglan and Georgi Boby. The startup built an AI-powered automation platform for marketing and go-to-market teams, allowing users to create and run workflows across different business tools using natural-language instructions.
Rilo Built AI Workflows for Marketing Teams
Rilo’s platform was designed to automate a range of tasks that typically require employees to move between multiple software tools.
Users could describe a workflow in plain English, after which Rilo’s AI agents would build and execute the required sequence of actions.
The platform supported use cases including competitor intelligence, prospecting, content repurposing and distribution, sales-call analysis and campaign research.
It also allowed customers to build customised workflows rather than relying entirely on pre-configured automations.
That approach positioned Rilo around a broader idea of AI adoption: allowing non-technical employees to create automated processes without having to write code or build traditional integrations.
More Than 10,000 Users Built With Rilo
Rilo co-founder and CEO Dhruv Jaglan said more than 10,000 users had built with the platform within months of its launch.
Announcing the acquisition on LinkedIn, Jaglan said Rilo was joining Adobe with a mission to help bring AI-powered workflow capabilities to Fortune 500 marketers.
He said the company’s original objective was to expand access to AI beyond engineers and technical teams.
Co-founder Georgi Boby also confirmed the acquisition, saying the startup had always been focused on extending AI’s capabilities to a broader group of knowledge workers.
He described the acquisition as an opportunity for the team to continue that mission at a much larger scale.
Adobe’s Second Known Indian Startup Acquisition
The Rilo deal adds to Adobe’s relatively small but growing acquisition activity in India.
In 2023, Adobe acquired Rephrase.ai, a Bengaluru-based generative AI video startup. The company developed technology for generating AI-powered video content, an area closely aligned with Adobe’s creative software portfolio.
Rilo is different in its focus. Rather than concentrating primarily on video generation, the startup built automation technology for marketing and business teams.
The acquisition therefore gives Adobe another piece of technology that could potentially support its broader push into AI-powered creativity, productivity and customer experience.
Adobe has not publicly detailed which products or services will eventually incorporate Rilo’s technology.
Rilo Raised $1 Million Before the Acquisition.
Rilo had raised around $1 million from investors including Peak XV Partners, DeVC and Day Zero Ventures, according to media reports.
The startup was reportedly valued at about $10 million in that funding round.
The company had a six-member team at the time of the acquisition. Reports indicate that Adobe is expected to bring the team on board and integrate parts of Rilo’s intellectual property into its own business, while Rilo’s investors are expected to receive an exit.
Adobe has not publicly disclosed the specific financial structure of the transaction.
Rilo Platform to Shut Down
The acquisition will also mark the end of Rilo as an independent product.
The startup is expected to shut down its platform following the transaction, meaning existing customers will no longer be able to use Rilo as a standalone service.
Jaglan said the company would help users transition their workflows during the shutdown.
The move suggests that Adobe’s primary interest lies in Rilo’s technology, intellectual property, and team rather than continuing the product as an independent business.
Why Adobe Is Interested in AI Automation
Marketing teams increasingly rely on multiple applications for research, content creation, campaign management, analytics, and customer engagement.
AI agents can potentially connect those tools and automate repetitive steps between them, allowing teams to spend less time on manual processes.
That aligns with Adobe’s broader push to bring AI into enterprise marketing and customer-experience workflows.
The company has been expanding its AI capabilities across its creative and enterprise product portfolios, while increasingly positioning AI as a tool for automating parts of the content and marketing lifecycle.
Rilo’s technology could complement that strategy by providing another layer for orchestrating tasks across business systems.
Investors See Larger Enterprise Potential
Rahul Gupta, managing partner at Day Zero Ventures, which backed Rilo, described the startup’s workflow builder as being ahead of the curve.
He said the technology could be valuable to Adobe in areas including customer experience and productivity.
For Rilo’s investors, the acquisition also represents a rapid outcome for a startup that had been operating for less than a year.
The company’s quick progression from founding in September 2025 to acquisition by one of the world’s largest software companies reflects the speed at which AI startups can attract strategic interest when they address a clear enterprise use case.
From Startup to Adobe in Less Than a Year
Rilo’s journey has been unusually fast.
Founded by two IIT Bombay alumni in 2025, the startup raised early-stage capital, attracted thousands of users, and developed a product aimed at making AI automation accessible to non-technical teams.
Less than a year later, it has become part of Adobe.
The acquisition also highlights how the AI market is evolving beyond headline-generating foundation models and consumer applications. Companies are increasingly looking for technologies that can help employees automate real business processes and integrate AI into existing workflows.
Rilo was built around precisely that use case.
For Adobe, the acquisition offers access to a small team and a technology platform focused on AI agents, workflow automation and marketing productivity. The next step will be determining how those capabilities fit into Adobe’s much larger product ecosystem.
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Photo: (L-R) Dhruv Jaglan and Georgi Boby and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen
Source: ISN
