Big Data startup Crayon Data raises over $1M led by Jungle Ventures

Chennai- and Singapore-based Big Data and analytics startup Crayon Data Pte Ltd has secured 1.5 million Singapore dollars ($1.19 million) in funding led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, with participation from Spring Seed Capital. The capital raised will be used to expand the company's flagship product Simpler Choices—a choice engine that brings the power of Big Data and analytics to enterprises—globally.

Crayon Data was founded in 2012 by Suresh Shankar, founder of RedPill Solutions which was acquired by IBM in 2009, and Srikant Sastri, founder of Solutions Digitas and Team4U, which were acquired by Publicis and Randstad, respectively.

With the new round, the total funding raised by Crayon Data to date stands at $4.35 million. Last September, the company had secured over $1.4 million in its second round of funding from Ravi Thakran, CEO of L Capital Asia and head of LVMH Asia Pacific; Ravi Mantha, president, TIE Singapore; Meng Wong, co-founder of the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator; William Bissell, managing director of FabIndia; Ernest Pomerantz, chairman of Stonewater Capital; and Cheah Kim Lean and Chong Wah (founders of Acorn Market Research).

The company aims to build a platform-based Big Data venture that challenges the conventional people-led model of analytics, and delivers real business solutions by bringing together enterprise, public, external internet and social data to a single platform. It currently offers two products—Simpler Choices and One Drop Analytics. While the first one helps consumers and businesses make better-informed and smarter decisions, One Drop Analytics boosts B2B sales and marketing intelligence and demand generation by providing insights on companies and markets. The firm's key focus verticals are hospitality, finance, retail and technology and it has a development centre in Chennai in India.

"Crayon Data's Simpler Choices platform is a differentiated play, and one that is already helping traditional enterprises like banks, retailers, telcos, hotels, etc. offer effective choices for their consumers, while changing the way they use big data," said Anurag Srivastava, co-founder and managing partner of Jungle Ventures.

With huge online data being generated every day, domestic as well as foreign investors are seeing a lot of growth potential in the Indian Big Data space, prompting them to invest in various startups. Last December, Mumbai-based Heckyl Technologies, which offers a Big Data-based analytical platform for investors, traders and researchers, secured over $3.5 million led by IDG Ventures India. In the same month, Bangalore-based Spire Technologies and Solutions Pvt Ltd, a Big Data startup that offers a contextual search engine to enterprises to manage their talent requirements, secured $8 million in Series A funding from an unnamed investor.

In December 2013, Bangalore-based Big Data firm Flutura Solutions raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Hive Technologies, a Big Data fund launched by Patni Siblings Arihant and Amit Patni.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)