Social Media Product Startup InRev Raises Series A Funding

Bangalore-based technology start-up InRev Systems Pvt Ltd has raised an undisclosed series A funding from a Kolkata-based investor.

Although the name of the investor cannot be obtained till the time of filing the article, it has been learnt that it is a fairly new firm which has made a couple of investments before. However, it is the first IT-centric funding for the new player in the market.

Following the investment, Raj Mishra, a representative of the investor group, has joined the board of InRev.

Set up in 2009 by a group of six entrepreneurs, InRev has developed Simplify360, a software tool for the social media brand monitoring and analytics market in India. It is used by several agencies and companies like Café Coffee Day, Starcom Mediavest Group, Beehive Communications, Impetus Research, Mast Kalandar, Narayana Netralaya and Spar Hypermarket.

The fund raised will be used to expand operations with offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, to be followed by two more in Hyderabad and Chennai by 2015. Additionally, InRev intends to set up a fully functional sales unit by March this year.

Within a year of the product launch, InRev has acquired around 50 clients of whom 35 are agencies and 15 are corporate clients. The company also claims to have posted around 200 per cent revenue growth during the past 4-5 months. It is now looking to touch Rs 2 crore in revenue by mid-year and targeting close to Rs 6-7 crore by year-end.

Co-founded by Bhupendra Khanal, Sweta Sharma , Rohit Gupta, Deep Sherchan, Binit Thapa and Laxmi Khatiwada, InRev has been a self-funded company till now.

An alumnus of National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, Khanal had previously worked with Global Analytics, Fair Isaac Corporation and Marketelligent, before setting up InRev. While Sharma worked with GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Ltd, another co-founder Gupta had earlier worked with Ajax Knowledge Systems, Valtech India, Fidelity Investments India and Cisco Systems.

Sherchan had been a co-founder of another start-up called Mandala Electronic Pvt Ltd (a provider of hardware solutions), Thapa was a software engineer with Aricent while Khatiwada was the founder Neotech Solutions.