Adobe buys Indian AI startup Rilo to beef up its marketing automation tools
The six-person team behind Rilo built software that automates marketing tasks like competitor research and sales call analysis. Now they're joining Adobe, and Rilo itself is shutting down.
Key points
- Adobe acquired Rilo, a marketing automation startup based in India, in a deal covering the six-member team and the company's technology.
- Rilo raised $1 million at a $10 million valuation from investors including PeakXV and Day Zero Ventures, and was founded in 2025.
- The acquisition is Adobe's second from India, following its 2023 purchase of video platform Rephrase.ai.
- Rilo will shut down after the deal closes, meaning existing customers lose access to the product.
- Adobe bought SEO company Semrush for $1.9 billion last year, part of a pattern of acquiring marketing intelligence rather than building it.
Adobe has quietly bought a tiny Indian startup called Rilo, as first reported by TechCrunch, and the deal's worth watching even though the price stayed private.
Rilo, founded in 2025 by IIT graduates Georgi Boby and Dhruv Jaglan, built software for marketing teams to automate repetitive work: pulling insights from sales calls, reshaping content for different platforms, tracking what competitors are up to. No engineer required to wire it together.
What did Rilo actually do?
Rilo let go-to-market teams build custom automated workflows without writing code. Competitor intelligence, content redistribution, sales call analysis: teams could configure these as sequences the software runs on its own. It also let teams connect those workflows to AI assistants, comparable to what Claude and ChatGPT now offer for workplace tasks. That matters because brands are increasingly trying to make their products visible when customers ask AI chatbots for recommendations.
Rilo raised $1 million from investors including PeakXV, DeVC, and Day Zero Ventures at a $10 million valuation. A source told TechCrunch that investors will receive an exit from the deal.
What does Adobe get out of this?
Six engineers and a set of workflow tools it can fold into existing marketing and creative products. Adobe's large corporate customers run complex campaigns, and automation that removes manual steps has obvious appeal at that scale.
"Their workflow builder product was way ahead of the curve and shall be extremely valuable to a giant like Adobe in enhancing customer experience and productivity," Rahul Gupta, Managing Partner at Day Zero Ventures, told TechCrunch.
DeVC's Rahul Mathur told TechCrunch that Rilo could slot into Adobe's customer experience and marketing suite, handling complex workflows and giving clients better visibility into their activity inside Adobe's platform.
The Semrush buy sits in the same logic. We first covered Adobe's $1.9 billion Semrush deal when it was announced, and this acquisition fits the same playbook: buy the capability, don't build it. Rivals aren't standing still either. Canva has been bolstering its marketing portfolio, while Amazon, Google, and Meta have built their own AI-powered marketing infrastructure.
What happens to Rilo's customers?
Rilo shuts down completely. Anyone using it now will lose access. Adobe hasn't said whether any features will resurface inside its own products, or when.
Honestly, that silence is the most telling part of this deal. Adobe gets the team and the IP; Rilo's users get nothing but a deadline. Start looking for an alternative now.
