Excl: Big Data firm Affine Analytics in talks to raise Series A led by Helion

Bangalore-based Big Data firm Affine Analytics is in talks to raise its Series A round of funding led by Helion Venture Partners, sources familiar with the development told Techcircle.in.

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When contacted by Techcircle.in, Manas Agarwal, founder, Affine Analytics, declined to comment on this deal. An email query sent to Alok Goyal, partner at Helion Venture Partners, did not elicit a response.

In a previous interaction with VCCircle, Agarwal had said that the company is looking at VC funding to build its team, launch new products and expand geographically.

Almost 90 per cent of the business for Affine comes from the US market and the remaining from India.  The company is looking at newer geographies like UK and Singapore to expand.

Close to 60 per cent of the company's clients are in the retail sector while 40 per cent are from automotive and gaming.

In November 2012, when the company got an angel funding of around $1 million, it had 20 employees; now its staff strength has crossed 40.

Big Data has been a hot space attracting investors. Last week Germin8 raised $3 million in its Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital and DataRPM secured $5.1 million in a Series A round of funding from US-based investor InterWest Partners with participation of existing investor CIT Gap Funds. Prior to that, Chennai- and Singapore-based Crayon Data Pte Ltd had secured $1.19 million led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, with participation from Spring Seed Capital.

In the past AbsolutData and Mu Sigma had raised much larger quantum of money.

According to IT software body NASSCOM, the size of the Indian analytics market is $375 million and more than 500 companies are operating in this segment in India. This market is expected to be $1.15 billion by 2015.

Helion Ventures Partners, which has over $605 million in assets under management, invests in technology-powered and consumer service businesses in sectors like outsourcing, internet, mobile, technology products, retail services, healthcare, education and financial services.

It has been an active investor in Indian startups and in the recent past invested in firms like LinguaNext Technologies Pvt Ltd, which offers a language management platform for software applications; mobile payment solutions firm Ezetap besides putting more in existing portfolio companies Jivox Software and Pubmatic.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)