Ratan Tata invests in Infinite Analytics

Infinite Analytics Inc, a US-based predictive marketing and analysis company run by India-born founders, has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Tata Sons' chairman emeritus Ratan Tata and other investors.

Existing investor Nikhil Vora (founder and CEO of Sixth Sense Ventures) and new investors from Silicon Valley and India have also participated in this round, as per a statement.

Infinite Analytics will use the money to extend its predictive analytics technology to verticals beyond retail and e-commerce.

"We have grown up admiring and respecting Tata's business acumen and this is a great opportunity for us to learn from him directly. His guidance and vision will definitely help us grow Infinite Analytics into an analytics powerhouse," said Akash Bhatia, co-founder and CEO, Infinite Analytics.

The press statement said the idea behind Infinite Analytics was born in a class conducted by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Founded in 2012 by MIT graduates Bhatia and Purushotam Botla, the company specialises in deep machine learning and predictive analytics by merging data from multiple sources to create a 360-degree view of the user. It counts Indian and overseas players such as AirBnB, Comcast, B2W Digital, BabyOye, eBay, Future Group, Infibeam, NBA, NDTV Retail and Trendin among others as customers.

Infinite Analytics had showcased its offerings at the Techcircle Big Data Forum 2014.

Infinite Analytics had raised seed capital from investors based in Australia, Taiwan, India, the UK and the US. Infinite Analytics is also backed by Tim Berners-Lee and Deb Roy, chief media scientist at Twitter.

Last November, CromaRetail.com, a subsidiary of Tata Sons, had tied up with Infinite Analytics to provide personalised recommendations to its online users.

For Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, the private holding arm of the business conglomerate, this is the 11th known personal tech investment.

He has been investing in Indian as well as international tech startups for the past year or so.

He has also backed ventures like Ampere, Ola, Paytm's parent One97 Communications, Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Bluestone and CarDekho besides investing in Chinese handset maker Xiaomi. Early this month, Tata participated in a funding round at YourStory, whose content and events compete with some offerings from Techcircle.in and VCC Events, which are both part of the 10-year-old VCCircle Network. The parent of VCCircle Network—whose business lines include subscription data products, events, training programmes and a subscription-led news website and app focused on the startup ecosystem as well as business at large in India—was acquired by News Corp in March.