Software Startup Capillary Tech To Raise $30 Mn in Fresh Funding

Capillary Technologies, one of India's few blue-eyed startups launched along with Flipkart in 2008, is on verge of raising a fresh round of funding, estimated at around $30 million, reported Economic Times.

The funding round is expected to take place in February.

The report further stated that the funding will primarily be secondary in nature, with just a third of the funds raised expected to come into Capillary as primary capital.

'Primary' means a direct investment in a company, for e.g - the VC gives a company money, and in exchange the company issues new shares for the VC. These new shares dilute the existing shareholders. While, 'Secondary' typically means buying existing shares from existing investors.

The fresh funding is expected to be led by its existing investor, marquee private equity firm, Warburg Pincus, and is likely to have a large secondary component.

Headquartered in Singapore & Bengaluru, Capillary last raised $45 Million from Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners, in September 2015. In total, excluding the upcoming funding, Capillary has raised $90 million.

Capillary is expected to use the proceeds from upcoming funding to expand its footprints, particularly in China, where it has already put a team in place, in July 2016. Additionally, it will also be building artificial intelligence products focused on offline retail, according to the sources of ET.

Founded in 2008 by Aneesh Reddy, Krishna Mehra and Ajay Modani, (the later two having left the company about 3 years ago), Capillary Technologies was incubated in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) and despite not being heavily funded like Flipkart, the company is one of few respected startups in not just India but globally too.

In June 2013 Harvard Business Review used Capillary as a Case for reverse Innovation in Tech Startups. In December 2016, Google's Vice President for South East Asia and India, Rajan Anandan joined Capillary as a Board member.

Moreover, in last couple of years, Capillary has made few important acquisitions as well. In September 2015, Capillary acquired an eCommerce software platform MartJack as one of the biggest acquisitions of 2015 and in October 2016, Capillary acquired SellerWorx, an eCommerce services and technology company.

Capillary Technologies Appoints Ganesh Lakshminarayanan as the Chief Operating Officer

Capillary Technologies, the Omni channel customer engagement and commerce platform, has appointed Mr. Ganesh Lakshminarayanan as the new COO of the company.

In his new role, Ganesh will steward the company’s hyper growth steering towards profitability. His efforts would translate to scaling Capillary to be the product bellwether from Asia. Ganesh also serves on the board of Capillary. He brings with him a vast and varied experience in IT solution sales and delivery, e-commerce, e-support, IT/ITES, outsourcing, big data, decision sciences and customer service in his long and illustrious career. This appointment marks his entry into India’s fast growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Speaking on his appointment, Aneesh Reddy, Co-Founder Capillary Technologies commented, “We are extremely excited to bring Ganesh on board. He was

the first President and MD of Dell in India and was instrumental in starting Dell’s business in India fifteen years ago. He planned the start-up of the firm’s operations, scaled the company’s business and laid the foundation for a billion dollar domestic market operations and half-a-billion dollar point of need services business. We are confident of the fact that Ganesh will replicate this stellar success and help us take Capillary Technologies to the next level of growth and innovation.”

Ganesh began his career in consulting and then moved to a role in Dell based out of Austin, where he led significant parts of Dell’s e-support group worldwide and e-commerce group for Americas. Come 2001, he moved into entrepreneurial mode, starting up Dell’s operations in India. Over ten years, he scaled it to a team of 15000 with a billion dollar domestic market operation. While doing this, he also led Dell’s global consumer and small medium business services group and built half-a-billion-dollar point of need services business. This led him to bigger roles within Dell, with him leading sales operations for all of Asia Pacific and Japan.

He then started playing a stronger role in India’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. As senior advisor at sequoia capital, he worked closely with some of their portfolio companies like Mu Sigma, BankBazar, Porter, and Capillary Technologies. He also served as a Senior Advisor to EY advising them on an entrepreneurial venture. Ganesh continues to be an investor and advisor to many start-ups and he currently works with Practo, Mahiti, and Belong, besides being on the board of a learning platform company – Linkstreet. He is also a founding member of Social Venture Partners @Bangalore and member of Indian Angels Network.

Ganesh has also made significant contributions to the industry at large, having served twice as elected member in the NASSCOM executive council which is the industry body for Indian IT/ITES sector and FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

Ganesh has an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and BS in Computer Science and Engineering with top honor as gold medalist, from Anna University in Chennai, India.

Gaining Foothold in China Market, Capillary Technologies Appoints Tony Wang as its Director of Technology

Expanding its horizons, Capillary Technologies announces the initiation of its first technology team overseas, with Tony Wang as its newly appointed Director of Technology. Recognizing the growth potential China offers, the home-grown company, based in Bengaluru, is all geared up to commence its first 10-member technology team outside of India.

Tony Wang comes with over 20 years of extensive experience in IT software R&D, system implementation, and technology management across various industries including retail and finance. He has previously worked with leading global companies such as Bertelsmann, Oracle, Autodesk, Arvato services etc.

Capillary Technologies is bridging the gap and equipping retailers with cutting-edge, SaaS-based, customer engagement suite of products and solutions, recently launched a social CRM for China-based app WeChat and is also integrating its e-commerce CRM with Alibaba-owned online retailers Tmall and Taobao Mall. The omnichannel customer engagement and commerce platform company that provides solutions to retailers is also collaborating with apparel retailers like Lee, GXG and VF.

Commenting on the announcement, Aneesh Reddy, CEO and Co-founder, Capillary Technologies commented, “Tony’s appointment is of great strategic importance to us at Capillary. After India, this will be our second development center which will focus entirely on the local market. The purpose is to cater to the local market better so that we can engineer solutions that are relevant to the local demands. Tony comes with a quiver full of rich and diverse experience in domains such as CRM, FMCG, services and finance industries both globally and in China and we are extremely excited about the value addition and expertise he will bring to the table.”

Commenting on his new role, Tony says, "China retail Industry has clearly been a step ahead of all other Asian countries, and Capillary is a rising forerunner with its range of products, including Capillary InStore, Capillary Analytics and Capillary WeChat CRM that have won the loyalty of many businesses. I am excited to join this young and dynamic team and look forward to building future-ready products to take the China business to the next level."

The company is also ramping up its sales and account management teams and customer success teams across India, China, Southeast Asia, Europe, West Asia and Africa.

Capillary Technologies Appoints Sunil Suresh as the Global Vice President, Strategy

Capillary Technologies, the leader in cloud-based Omni-Channel Engagement and Commerce solutions has appointed Sunil Suresh as the Global Vice President, Strategy. In this newly created role, Sunil will steward the strategic transformation of the company, with an aim to unlock the next phase of hyper growth. This will include clarifying the brand and product positioning, leading marketing efforts and helping build customer centricity & consulting capabilities in Capillary products and solution offerings.

Speaking on the new appointment, Aneesh Reddy- Co Founder and CEO, Capillary Technologies, commented, “Sunil comes to us with 18 years of rich experience and expertise in Marketing, Brand Strategy, P&L management and Digital Transformation across South Asia, Middle East, Turkey & Africa. He has a proven track record of leading teams and driving growth in Marquee F100 companies including Yum Brands and Unilever. Sunil also has a deep understanding of consumer behavior and how businesses should leverage the power of Digital to win with consumers. Capillary’s offerings help businesses unlock the power of digital and the insights and strategic thought that Sunil brings to the table will help us create state-of-the-art digital products that are truly customer centric. He will also help propel us with powerful branding and communication.”

Prior to joining Capillary Technologies, Sunil was with Yum Brands as the Chief Digital Officer/Director Pizza Hut, Middle East, Africa, Pakistan & Turkey. In previous roles, he has been Marketing Director(Pizza Hut), MENA at Yum Brands and Regional Marketing Manager at Hindustan Unilever. Sunil holds an engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management.

He has also been a thought leader and Keynote speaker at several industry events including the Retail Summit, Customer Show Middle East, Kantar Marketing Masterclass, Digital Marketing World Forum, CMO Conclave and CDO Summit.

Expanding CRM Footprints in Indian Retail, Capillary Technologies Buys Minority Stake in Exclusífe

Capillary Technologies, the leader in cloud-based OmniChannel Engagement and Commerce solutions, has partnered with Exclusífe to provide comprehensive CRM solutions to retailers of all sizes in India. As part of this partnership, Capillary has also made its largest investment to date, for a minority stake in Exclusífe.

Elaborating on the partnership, Aneesh Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies said, “Exclusífe’s SMB-focused solution is totally complementary to the Enterprise CRM solutions from Capillary. This partnership means that, for the first time, retailers and brands of all sizes will have access to best-of-breed solutions. Partnering with best-in-breed companies like Exclusífe is a continuation of our strategy to build a comprehensive 360°solution for the retail fraternity and be future ready.”

Appreciating the partnership, Anand Krushnan, Co-Founder and CEO of Exclusífe, said, “Capillary’s partnership and investment is a strong endorsement of Exclusífe’s mission of enabling millions of SMB retailers with sophisticated technology limited only to larger brands and enterprises. Capillary’s support has jumpstarted our fundraising efforts as we target profitability later this year.”

Capillary Technologies has been growing its offerings via acquisitions; the company had earlier acquired digital commerce provider MartJack, machine learning startup Ruaha Labs, and ecommerce enabler Sellerworx. They had also earlier made minority investments in CloudCherry, a customer satisfaction engagement company, and, WebEngage, a multi-channel user engagement platform.

Capillary, connects over 200 million consumers, enables 25,000+ stores and 250+ enterprise implementations across 30 countries. Leading brands such as Unilever, Walmart, Landmark Group, Madura Fashion, Arvind Brands, Redtag, Calvin Klein, Gap, Courts, Clarks, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and Puma work with Capillary to drive retail excellence.

“Exclusífe’s goal is to change the shopping experience in 40+ Million SMB retailers that are at the heart of the Indian commerce. Digital India starts with changing your neighborhood shopping experience, one store at a time”, added Krushnan.

Exclusífe provides mobile-first CRM solutions for millions of SMB retailers in India. The company specifically targets the elusive “offline” SMB retail community with its offerings. It has built a large customer base of nearly 4,500 SMB retail customers in over 22 cities and manages over 22 Million consumer profiles.

Capillary Technologies Appoints Ex-Jabong Marketing Head Soumajit Bhowmik as the Director of eCommerce

Capillary is an Omni-channel Engagement and Commerce Platform solutions company, enabling brands with digital transformation and ROI-led customer engagement solutions today announced the appointment of Soumajit Bhowmik as the company’s new Director of E-commerce.

In his new role, Bhowmik will assume the responsibility of working towards creating integrated ecommerce solutions for clients ranging from CRM to Ecommerce platform to extensive Digital Marketing with measurable KPIs, to support every stage of customer lifecycle - acquisition, activation, reactivation and win back. He will also be driving Capillary's attempts to move the ecommerce business from a platform play to an ROI play model.

Prior to joining Capillary Technologies, he served as the Head of Marketing at Jabong.com, managing the e-commerce portal’s complete performance marketing suite. During his stint, Jabong became Gross Profitable in May 2016, and saw massive improvements in performance metrics.

An entrepreneur at heart, passionate about creative designing and digital marketing, Bhowmik started a few startups soon after graduating from college, including the Indian and Kuwait branches of sCubes Inc, AdWize, an experiential digital marketing and branding solutions company and few web startups like RowdyAuto.in, FundorasBox, etc.

Speaking on the appointment, Soumajit Bhowmik, Director of E-commerce, Capillary Technologies, commented, “I am extremely excited to join Capillary Technologies. The company today is a market leader in Omni-channel customer engagement and commerce space and being an agile and innovation driven company with the startup DNA still at its very core, Capillary is all set to ride the growth matrix in the coming times.”

Speaking on the appointment, Aneesh Reddy, CEO and Co-founder, Capillary Technologies, commented, “It will be an understatement to say that Asia is at the cusp of digital revolution where customer is the focus. Brands are expecting to garner 10-15% of their revenues through digital. We acquired MartJack, which is now Asia’s leading Omni-channel platform. We recently bought Sellerworx, which helps brands to manage marketplace operations and omni-channel order management. The missing piece was the “demand” side – digital marketing – where we help our customers get quality traffic and in-turn revenues. We are convinced that ROI-led digital marketing practice will fundamentally transform our customers’ business. This will strengthen our promise of 3600 customer transformation for marquee brands. We are excited to welcome Bhowmik to Capillary and we believe his deep expertise in digital space coupled with his analytical and creative strengths will help us leapfrog in digital marketing space.”

Soumajit Bhowmik is a graduate from IIT Kharagpur and holds a Senior Diploma in Fine Arts. He is an avid speaker and spoke at coveted platforms such as the Oracle CloudWorld Summit this year, and at the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) meet in Delhi.

Capillary Technologies’ is focused towards empowering and enabling retailers and consumer brands to increase their customer reach, engagement levels, sales volume and loyalty through a state-of-the-art Omni-channel Engagement and Commerce suite.

Image : Capillary's Founders

InnoVen Capital Announces Cross-Border Funding for Capillary Technologies and Simplilearn Solutions

InnoVen Capital, Asia’s leading venture debt firm,has recently closed two cross‑border financing deals through its presence in both India and South East Asia. These deals are with Capillary Technologies - an Omni-channel Engagement and Commerce solution company and has a stronghold in India, South East Asia, MENA and China among other countries, and Simplilearn Solutions–one of the largest online professional certification providers focused on the US and Indian markets along with South East Asia. These structured debt deals amounting to ~USD 6 million in aggregate are holistic solutions that take into account the global operations and resulting financing needs of both these high-growth and high-potential businesses.

Ajay Hattangdi, Group COO and CEO India, InnoVen Capital commented, “InnoVen Capital is an early supporter of emerging entrepreneurial companies across our current key markets of India and South East Asia. Many of these companies are looking beyond their home markets as they advance on their global ambitions. InnoVen Capital’s unified venture debt platform which is integrated across our regional teams helps clients to access growth capital globally. Our ability to provide loans across geographies enables clients like Capillary and Simplilearn to rationalise costs while enjoying more flexibility in their funding options. Going forward, we expect many more companies to take advantage of our cross-border platform capability”.

InnoVen Capital that started as India’s first and largest venture debt provider started operations in South East Asialate last year and announced its first two deals in the markets outside India in March’16: Malaysia-based online health and fitness company KFit, and Thailand-based e-commerce fast fashion company Pomelo.

With these latest cross border deals,InnoVen Capital has demonstrated its focus on fuelling growth of high-growth innovative ventures in India that have global aspirations. InnoVen Capital’s first engagement with Capillary was back in 2014 and since then has backed the company several times,in tandem with the company’s financing needs such as acquisition financing and now, cross border funding.

Speaking on the relationship with InnoVen, Aneesh Reddy, CEO Capillary Technologies said, "Capillary Technologies is committed to launch industry-first Omni-channel innovations for Asian Retail market.We continue to grow 2X YoY with a strong focus on profitability. InnoVen has been an entrepreneur-friendly venture debt partner and their ability to provide financing at various stages of our growth continues to help us immensely in our journey."

Krishna Kumar, CEO Simplilearn Solutions added, “We are happy to have InnoVen Capital join the Simplilearn growth story. InnoVen's debt capital allows us to leverage the business and create more value for all our stake holders.”

Temasek and United Overseas Bank (UOB), the two main investors in InnoVen Capital, have committed a total of USD 200 million for building out the platform in Asia. InnoVen Capital expects to commit over USD 500 million in venture debt transaction to high-growth innovative start-up companies across the globe over the next five years. According to an EY report on venture debt, the potential market size for venture debt in India, China and Singapore between 2015 and 2019 is USD 2.2 billion.

Bangalore Startup Capillary to get Rs.84 crore of Funding

Capillary Technologies, a Bangalore based startup just got richer by 84 crores. Sequoia Capital has teamed up along with Norwest Ventures Partners in order to increase their hold in the Bangalore based startup by investing a whopping 84 crores in the company which accelerates the value of the startup to over 600 crores.

The startup will most probably use the invested funds in growing its retail partnership ecosystem in the international markets and enhance its cloud based marketing platform.

The company has already taken the initial steps of growing its retail partnership ecosystem by partnering with Blue Label Engage in South Africa and the American Express Global Merchant Service Businesses.

Capillary Technologies specializes in building artificial intelligence which helps big shot retailers like Puma, Pizza Hut, Nike and Benetton predict and understand their customer purchase behavior.

According to Aneesh Reddy, who co-founded the company with Ajay Modani and Krishna Mehra six years ago, the company’s mission was to basically raise enough money for the next two years. Now, the company in its six years of existence has been successful in raising a total of over 180 crores in funding from investors like Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.

Reddy further boosts about how the retailers have realized a 15 percent increase in average transaction value and a 30 percent increase in their customer retention rate by implementing the company’s solution.  Capillary has been able to add some 50 clients in the past one year. The company’s strength and USP lies in its ability to deliver immediate business results.

The company has recently also partnered with Agilysys, a Georgia based hospitality software maker, which functions across Asia, North America and Europe. According to Anant Choubey, vice president for Asia-Pacific at Capillary, the company is very excited about this partnership as it will allow them to provide innovative solution to all size companies in the hospitality sector.

American Express ventures, which is the Venture capital arm of the world’s biggest credit card issuer by purchases, had made a strategic investment in Capillary Technologies in February this year. This was its first investment in India.

Bangalore Startup Capillary to get Rs.84 crore of Funding

Capillary Technologies, a Bangalore based startup just got richer by 84 crores. Sequoia Capital has teamed up along with Norwest Ventures Partners in order to increase their hold in the Bangalore based startup by investing a whopping 84 crores in the company which accelerates the value of the startup to over 600 crores.

The startup will most probably use the invested funds in growing its retail partnership ecosystem in the international markets and enhance its cloud based marketing platform.

The company has already taken the initial steps of growing its retail partnership ecosystem by partnering with Blue Label Engage in South Africa and the American Express Global Merchant Service Businesses.

Capillary Technologies specializes in building artificial intelligence which helps big shot retailers like Puma, Pizza Hut, Nike and Benetton predict and understand their customer purchase behavior.

According to Aneesh Reddy, who co-founded the company with Ajay Modani and Krishna Mehra six years ago, the company’s mission was to basically raise enough money for the next two years. Now, the company in its six years of existence has been successful in raising a total of over 180 crores in funding from investors like Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.

Reddy further boosts about how the retailers have realized a 15 percent increase in average transaction value and a 30 percent increase in their customer retention rate by implementing the company’s solution.  Capillary has been able to add some 50 clients in the past one year. The company’s strength and USP lies in its ability to deliver immediate business results.

The company has recently also partnered with Agilysys, a Georgia based hospitality software maker, which functions across Asia, North America and Europe. According to Anant Choubey, vice president for Asia-Pacific at Capillary, the company is very excited about this partnership as it will allow them to provide innovative solution to all size companies in the hospitality sector.

American Express ventures, which is the Venture capital arm of the world’s biggest credit card issuer by purchases, had made a strategic investment in Capillary Technologies in February this year. This was its first investment in India.