Big Data firm Spire Technologies raises $8M in Series A funding

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, has secured $8 million in Series A funding from an unnamed strategic investor. It said the deal was at a post-money valuation of $23 million or pre-money valuation of $15 million.

Spire offers various solutions for supply chain management, customer relationship management, fraud intelligence, talent growth management and predictive talent intelligence. It also provides fraud detection solutions by pulling in data from unstructured data such as documents, emails, SMS and reviews.

It will deploy the funds to grow its business in the US, EMEA and APAC markets in addition to investing in technology, talent and marketing. The company will also unveil various solutions over the next six months.

"We will now be able to pursue our vision of unleashing a global wave of business transformation solutions that deliver unprecedented ROI by using the power of Big Data, especially unstructured data that is curated in unique ways," said Saurabh Jain, founder & CEO, Spire Technologies.

Encube Venture Partners LLP, an investment advisory firm, provided strategic finance consulting and advice to Spire on this investment.

The firm was founded by Jain in 2008. Jain holds an advanced master's degree in Global Enterprise Management from GDW Consortium – a joint initiative of IIM Bangalore, SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan), University of Hong Kong, and UCLA Anderson School of Management (Los Angeles). In the past, he had worked with Yahoo, SAP, Oracle, Worldspan and Galileo in various roles.

Spire had previously raised around $1 million in a seed round from several angel investors.

Earlier, in December, the news of Spire raising its first institutional round appeared in TechCrunch which said the money had come from an institutional investor. It said Spire had annual revenues of about $400,000.

In another recent funding in the Big Data space, three months ago Mumbai-based Heckyl Technologies, which offers a Big Data-based analytical platform for investors, traders and researchers, secured over $3.5 million in Series B round of funding led by IDG Ventures India.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)