Excl: SaaS analytics startup Crayon Data close to securing $2M from Jungle Ventures, Spring Seed, others

Chennai- and Singapore-based Big Data analytics startup Crayon Data Pte Ltd is in advanced talks to raise $2 million in additional funding from its existing investors, including Singapore-based Jungle Ventures and Spring Seed Capital, a top executive of Crayon told Techcircle.in.

The company, which has been raising capital on a rolling basis since launching in 2012, expects to close the current round by the end of this week.

"To date, we have raised about $5.5 million in angel funding. Now, our existing investors including Jungle Ventures and Spring Seed, besides some of the individual investors, are putting around $2 million more into our firm," said Srikant Sastri, co-founder of Crayon Data.

Crayon Data was founded in 2012 by Suresh Shankar, founder of RedPill Solutions which was acquired by IBM in 2009, and Sastri, who had earlier founded two companies – Solutions Digitas and Team4U – which were acquired by Publicis and Randstad, respectively. 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.

Crayon Data's flagship product is called Simpler Choices. It is a choice engine that brings the power of Big Data and analytics to enterprises. The company claims that Simpler Choices will enable clients increase their sales conversions and improve returns from existing accounts. The firm's key focus verticals are hospitality, finance, retail and technology and it has a development centre in Chennai in India.

​Crayon Data claims that currently it has 10 customers that include a mid-sized hotel chain in the UK, an MNC bank in Singapore and a lifestyle & fashion retailer in India. ​The firm expects to close the current calendar year with a monthly revenue run rate of $500,000.

Crayon banks on a SaaS-based revenue model, where clients pay a monthly subscription fee towards deployment of the platform. The quantum of fee is based on the number of credit cards (banks), number of rooms (hotels) or number of shoppers or stores (retail).

The co-founder also informed that Crayon plans to raise $20 million in its Series B round of funding sometime next year.

The Indian Big Data space has seen a lot of action, of late. Recently, analytics company Manthan Software Services raised about $3 million from Fidelity Growth Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. Early last month, Mumbai-based pure-play analytics provider Fractal Analytics raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Canadian loyalty management firm Aimia. India- and US-based Mu Sigma Inc., one of the leading Big Data analytics companies in the world, is in talks with a group of investors to raise upwards of $200 million in fresh funding, which could value the company more than Flipkart.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)