Bengaluru: Start-up data analytics firm Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd on Wednesday said it has raised funding from a group of angel investors, including former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, Aarin Capital co-founder Mohandas Pai, WhatsApp vice-president Neeraj Arora and Junglee co-founder Anand Rajaraman, among others.
The company did not disclose the amount of funds raised.
The three-year-old company gathers data on start-ups and identifies trends, helping global venture capital (VC) firms, private equity groups and corporate strategy teams in their investment decisions. It has so far raised $3.5 million from Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal; Sahil Barua, co-founder of e-commerce logistics firm Delhivery, VC firm SAIF Partners, and an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ltd.
Japanese investor and Beenos founder Teruhide Sato, Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham, and Capillary Technologies CEO Aneesh Reddy also participated in the funding round.
Tracxn competes with CB Insights (which has raised $10 million) and Mattermark (which also raised $10 million)—both US-based companies that help VC firms in market research.
Tracxn was started in 2013 by Abhishek Goyal and Neha Singh, former VC investors at Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital, respectively. Goyal ran online beauty products and fashion retailer Urban Touch from 2011 to 2013 until its sale to rival FashionAndYou. Tracxn now employs about 260 people, with a team of 130 analysts tracking start-ups in various segments.
“Investors were our early adopters. But today, large enterprises is our biggest as well as the fastest growing customer segment. We work with enterprises and investors across over 20 countries. As we expand our footprint, we look forward to learn from people who have scaled large businesses globally,” said Neha Singh.
Tracxn said it grew its customer base by 400% in the past year and said it works with companies such as BMW, LG, Qihoo, VMWare, Target, Vodafone and Bosch, and VC firms Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Lightspeed.
“It is a great honour for us to be partnering with such amazing mentors. They bring an invaluable experience of having built large global enterprises and diverse geographical presence, which will be vital as we scale Tracxn,” said Goyal.
Besides start-ups that have attracted institutional investors, Tracxn also tracks unfunded start-ups. It currently analyses start-ups in India, the US and South-East Asia in about 100 sectors, including enterprise infrastructure, enterprise applications, technology, consumer, mobile, digital marketing, health and education, and plans to expand its research to about 25 countries across West Asia, Europe and Canada in 2016.
Tracxn has offices in the US and Bengaluru and works with over 6,000 clients. The company said it is looking to expand its customer footprint in Japan, South-East Asia, West Asia and other parts of Europe.
According to documents filed with the registrar of companies, Tracxn posted revenue of Rs.2.31 crore for the year ended 31 March 2015, up from Rs.9.78 lakh in the previous year.
[“source-Livemint”]
