Citrix, One97's Vijay Shekhar Sharma Invest In Gmail Plugin GrexIt

GrexIt, Inc., is a neat start-up that makes Gmail inbox smarter, especially for people in large organisations where important information can be lost in clutter. It has signed on 500 companies so far and has just raised its second round of funding from Citrix Startup Accelerator and Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and managing director of One97 Communications, a VAS and mobile commerce (PayTM) provider.

While details of the funding have not been disclosed, we know that Citrix's accelerator programme typically invests $100,000-$400,000 (approximately Rs 50.6 lakh-Rs 2.02 crore) in start-ups.

GrexIt will use the funding to refine the product, which is still in beta, and enable it for MS Exchange and Outlook users. GrexIt's co-founder Niraj Ranjan Rout said, "We will primarily use the funding for product development. We already have a beta version for Google Apps live, which we are enhancing and extending to other e-mail platforms."

Pluggd.in first reported the fundraising.

In 2010, GrexIt raised funds from the Morpheus, a start-up accelerator with a focus on technology sector. It has previously invested in Crederity, DeskAway, Emo2, Instamedia, Practo, Radbox and Robots Alive. Currently, Morpheus' portfolio includes 99 Tests, Akosha, Mealnut, Mmp and Radhee.

Advantage GrexIt

Using GrexIt within their e-mail account, enterprises can create a knowledge base of e-mail messages and collaborate. They can use the information archive to make other enterprise processes more efficient and smooth. For example, in a hiring process, all job applications can be saved, as well as the e-mail discussions with applicants, which can be later shared with other team members and higher-ups by forwarding those to a designated e-mail ID or by using GrexIt's browser extension that adds a 'Send To GrexIt' button.

On a daily basis, more companies are discovering and joining GrexIt via Google Apps Marketplace, says Rout, adding that most of the service users are from the USA. "For now, the Google Apps Marketplace is our primary means of app distribution. We are also building GrexIt for MS Exchange and Outlook and we would release it within a few months," he said.

Business Model

The GrexIt plugin for Gmail was launched in beta in September this year and it is currently free to use. However, the start-up plans to go with the licensing model when it launches on other e-mail platforms such as MS Outlook.

"When we start charging, it will be a subscription model based on the number of users and the storage space used. We will also have a fully featured free plan available that would restrict the number of users. Once we release the version for MS Exchange/Outlook, we will also explore a traditional licensing model as a lot of our customers would want GrexIt to be deployed within their own IT infrastructures," said Rout.