CereBrahm offers a SaaS-based customer feedback and engagement platform to businesses, eyes global markets

Enterprises often find it hard to get real-time feedback from potential customers that in turn result in them losing opportunities to sign the customers up. By the time the company gets back to a customer, he/she might have already gone to a competitor. Also, often, businesses never get back to the customers to close the loop.

Bangalore-based CereBrahm Innovations Pvt Ltd claims to be addressing this problem effectively. The two-year-old startup has developed a solution called CereBrate, which provides customer insight to businesses through analytics by integrating with their business information systems.

"Almost every business collects feedback from its customers. From our personal experience, we saw that businesses would not change their ways and means even after collecting feedback. Upon further inquiry, we found that there are no well-defined processes, tools and support systems in place for soliciting and harnessing customer feedback," said CereBrahm's CEO Balasubramanian V.

"Businesses are constantly finding ways to communicate with their customers, exchange ideas with them, learn from them and create a customer-centric organisation. At the same time, customers want businesses to value them, provide a better experience and win their loyalty. This is where CereBrate comes in," he added.

The startup was founded in August 2012 by Balasubramanian and Subhashini S. Balasubramanian earlier worked at Sun Microsystems, GE Healthcare & AOL across multimedia, internet, e-commerce and healthcare verticals. Subhashini earlier worked at companies like Netscape, Sun Microsystems & GE Healthcare across internet and healthcare verticals.

Business model and traction

The startup, which is primarily targeting the healthcare, automobile and retail sectors, has already bagged five paying customers—Manipal Hospitals, Motherhood Hospital, Anand Diagnostic Lab, Bhima Jewellery and Ozone Media. The company operates on a SaaS revenue model, and does in-house deployment or cloud hosting depending on the size of the customer's business. It charges on a transaction basis with a minimum guarantee or a fixed fee for unlimited transactions.

"We see a lot of competition among businesses in India to provide better services, differentiate themselves and retain their customers. We are equally bullish about the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and plan to foray into these markets soon," said Balasubramanian. With an employee strength of eight, the company plans to hire three-four people by June this year to enhance its offering. The startup will look to set up sales offices in other metros as well.

Competition and fundraising

According to Balasubramanian, while most competitors are focusing on one or two verticals, CereBrate is flexible and can be customised by enterprises across verticals. "There are some companies like WebEngage, but they are largely focusing on the hospitality segment. Also, this firm is only into the services and feedback, whereas we do customer engagement as well."

The startup is planning to raise about $1 million in funding within six months to branch out to more verticals as well as for overseas expansion.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)