Intelligent Marketing Cloud MoEngage Raises $9 Mn from Matrix India and VenturEast

California, U.S headquartered intelligent marketing cloud for consumer businesses, MoEngage, has raised $9 million (~ ₹64 crore) in a Series B funding led by Matrix Partners India and VenturEast. MoEngage's existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Exfinity Ventures also contributed to the round.

With the latest round, the startup has raised a total of $15.8 million in funding over three rounds.

The startup will use the fresh funds to expand its global presence, strengthen data science capabilities and roll out integrated marketing technology stack for enterprise clients.

Founded in 2014 by IIT Kharagpur alumnus, Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth Kumar, MoEngage had raised an undisclosed amount in 2015, from Anand Chandrasekaran, the Head of Platform & Product Partnerships for Messenger at Facebook. Anand had then joined MoEngage's advisory panel.

Built for the Mobile-first world, MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale by analyzing 200+ million users and delivering 10+ billion interactions every month. With MoEngage, companies can orchestrate campaigns across channels like push, email, in-app messaging, web push and SMS, with auto-optimization towards higher conversions powered by machine learning.

With presence across Asia, Europe and the US, MoEngage claims to be the leader in the mobile engagement market. The 4-year-old company works with Consumer businesses across the world including Fortune 500 brands like Samsung, Deutsche Telekom, Hearst, Prudential, Vodafone and Internet-first companies like Flipkart Group, Tokopedia, Traveloka, Gaana, and Oyo.

Globally, MoEngage competes with Swrve, Kahuna, and WebEngage.

Source - Economic Times, Crunchbase

[Top Image - MoEngage @facebook]

Chennai-based Inthree Access Raises $4 Mn in Funding from Ventureast, Orios Venture and IAN Fund

Chennai-based Inthree Access, a rural area-focussed marketing, retailing and distribution firm, has raised $4 million in a Series A funding led by Ventureast, which also saw participation from Orios Venture Partners and the IAN Fund.

The startup will use the freshly raised capital to strengthen its technology backbone, enhance capabilities in last mile logistics and deepen its penetration in the 10 states where it operates.

Founded in 2013, by Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan, Inthree is an mpact venture that focuses on achieving the triple goals of rural distribution, rural project implementation and rural consultancy by offering last mile distribution and expertise in working in rural markets. Inthree claims to be the safest bet to reach the farthest towns and villages in the hinterland and is a great channel to distribute products and services of immense social value to lower income groups.

Inthree also operate an e-commerce venture exclusively for rural areas called Boonbox. In September last year, Boonbox raised an undisclosed amount in pre series A round from a group of investors including Keiretsu Forum and existing investors Indian Angel Network.

Through Boobox, the company claims to have sold more than 1.5 million durable goods to more than one million households.

In a statement a business daily, co-Founders Ramanathan, Karthik and Narayanan said, "Inthree has always focused on providing the most appropriate products, backed by home delivery (irrespective of distance) and top class after-sales service. We are delighted to be funded by some of the best names in the industry and plan to utilize the funds to increase scale and strengthen our backend capabilities to delight our customers."

Rohan Dedhia, Assistant Vice President, Orios Venture says, “Boonbox is building a technology enabled commerce platform for Bharat, the next 500mn consumers in India, that hail from the smallest towns and villages in India. The company has a vision to own this ecosystem: sales, financing, logistics and service, that is currently missing in these regions. We believe that, just like in other areas like content, technology enabled commerce in India will be driven by models made for vernacular speakers. The company's growth so far, is a testament to this."

Last month, Orios Venture Partners had also participated in the funding round of Jaipur-based B2B wholesale e-commerce venture Wholesalebox.

About Ventureast, it is a two-decade-old firm investing since 1997 and has about $325 million in assets under management. The investment firm, touted as one of India's longest standing venture capital firms, has made more than 100 investments so far. It had also invested in Little Eye Labs, a tool for app developers which was later got acquired by Facebook.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - R. Ramanathan, Founder, Inthree Access | Via - Indianonlineseller.com]

Chennai-based Inthree Access Raises $4 Mn in Funding from Ventureast, Orios Venture and IAN Fund

Chennai-based Inthree Access, a rural area-focussed marketing, retailing and distribution firm, has raised $4 million in a Series A funding led by Ventureast, which also saw participation from Orios Venture Partners and the IAN Fund.

The startup will use the freshly raised capital to strengthen its technology backbone, enhance capabilities in last mile logistics and deepen its penetration in the 10 states where it operates.

Founded in 2013, by Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan, Inthree is an mpact venture that focuses on achieving the triple goals of rural distribution, rural project implementation and rural consultancy by offering last mile distribution and expertise in working in rural markets. Inthree claims to be the safest bet to reach the farthest towns and villages in the hinterland and is a great channel to distribute products and services of immense social value to lower income groups.

Inthree also operate an e-commerce venture exclusively for rural areas called Boonbox. In September last year, Boonbox raised an undisclosed amount in pre series A round from a group of investors including Keiretsu Forum and existing investors Indian Angel Network.

Through Boobox, the company claims to have sold more than 1.5 million durable goods to more than one million households.

In a statement a business daily, co-Founders Ramanathan, Karthik and Narayanan said, "Inthree has always focused on providing the most appropriate products, backed by home delivery (irrespective of distance) and top class after-sales service. We are delighted to be funded by some of the best names in the industry and plan to utilize the funds to increase scale and strengthen our backend capabilities to delight our customers."

Rohan Dedhia, Assistant Vice President, Orios Venture says, “Boonbox is building a technology enabled commerce platform for Bharat, the next 500mn consumers in India, that hail from the smallest towns and villages in India. The company has a vision to own this ecosystem: sales, financing, logistics and service, that is currently missing in these regions. We believe that, just like in other areas like content, technology enabled commerce in India will be driven by models made for vernacular speakers. The company's growth so far, is a testament to this."

Last month, Orios Venture Partners had also participated in the funding round of Jaipur-based B2B wholesale e-commerce venture Wholesalebox.

About Ventureast, it is a two-decade-old firm investing since 1997 and has about $325 million in assets under management. The investment firm, touted as one of India's longest standing venture capital firms, has made more than 100 investments so far. It had also invested in Little Eye Labs, a tool for app developers which was later got acquired by Facebook.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - R. Ramanathan, Founder, Inthree Access | Via - Indianonlineseller.com]

Ventureast Announces First Closing of New Tech Fund, Targeting $150M

Ventureast, one of India’s longest standing early-stage Venture Capital firms, announced the first closing of their sixth fund- Ventureast Proactive Fund II (VPF2).The Fund received strong interest from existing and new investors, and targets a final closing in the next six months.

Ventureast Proactive Fund II will invest in seed and early stage businesses where ‘technology is a strong differentiator and not just an enabler’. The emphasis is on relatively unaddressed sectors such as rural and semi-urban markets, needs of the SME’s, and pure play technology ‘picks & shovels’. Ventureast expects these opportunities to emerge in fintech, enterprise applications, cloud, mobile internet, and IoT / consumer internet.

Ventureast has partnered with leading VC investors to build a ready pipeline of exciting early stage businesses over the last 12 months while fund raising activity was in full swing for VPF2. This active, collaborative approach has enabled VPF2 to hit the ground running, ie. invest in three deals concurrently with the first closing.

• Find me a Shoe offers a virtual shoe-fitting room for e-commerce businesses. The company uses cutting-edge, proprietary, computer vision technology to provide the world's first personalized virtual trial shopping experience. Customers get to create their digital foot profile on the app and find the right footwear via virtual trial shopping. Led by an ex-Intel technologist from IIMA; a serial entrepreneur and expert in Computer Vision; and, a product design major from Domus, Italy, the company graduated from the Target (USA) Accelerator Program in November 2015 and has already started working with brands and retailers in the US.

• A stealth-mode digital health company that provides personalised on-demand healthcare anytime, anywhere, via mobile devices, internet, video call and phone. The team is led by a serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley and a US-trained Interventional Radiologist & entrepreneur. The need for confidential and easily accessible digi-healthcare is immense, and Stanford University is collaborating with the company to put global best practices into play.

• OS Labs provides a platform enabling leading handset makers and app developers to deliver a world class smartphone experience that meets the real needs of the consumers through innovation, simplification and localization. Its product offering already has a significant penetration in the Indian mobile phone market. The company is founded by IIT graduates and the senior management team includes top professionals and leading voices in the Indian smartphone industry.

Sarath Naru, Managing Partner of Ventureast said, “We continue to invest in businesses where capital is not the primary competitive advantage, but ‘technology’ is. While huge investments have been made in tech businesses over the last five years chasing the ‘firstest with the mostest’ strategy, the emphasis today is on the kind of startups where technology will be the primary differentiator. These businesses are leveraging the cloud, IOT, big data analytics/AI, mobile, etc to build unique and globally scalable solutions.”

About Ventureast

Ventureast is one of the longest standing Venture capital fund managers in India, investing since 1997 and managing close to $400+ million. The company has a diverse portfolio of more than 100 investments in Technology, Healthcare and Clean Environment. Ventureast is possibly the only Indian Fund Manager that has dedicated funds and teams for each sector- life sciences & healthcare, and separately for technology driven businesses. Ventureast’s investments include:

• Gland Pharma: Global leader in small volume parenterals & low molecular weight heparin; built from Rs 2.5 cr sales at the time of our investment, to $1.35 Billion acquisition by Chinese major.
• Moschip: Built from zero revenues to become India’s first listed, semiconductor product company; created patented new products for laptop accessory market.
• Sresta’s 24 Mantra: An Organic ‘farm to fork’ concept; built from Rs 50 lac sales at time of our investment to close to Rs 1000 crores market value now.
• Little Eye Labs: Tools for App developers; built from ground zero to rapidly being India’s first acquisition by Facebook.
• Atyati: Agent based rural banking tech platform; Built from ground zero in just 5 years to develop a business pipeline well ahead of competitors, and acquired by NYSE listed company.
• Loylty Rewardz: No.1 consumer loyalty company with 300 million+ unique customers. Beat well-funded competitors and acquired by India’s largest payment company.