Nandan Nilekani invests in mobile balance tracker Mubble

Bangalore-based mobile startup Mubble, run by Mubble Networks Pvt Ltd, has raised an undisclosed investment from Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and former CEO of Infosys.

The money will be utilised to scale up its technology team, the company said in a statement.

Mubble, a mobile app, assists prepaid mobile users to curtail unexpected balance deductions by generating something similar to an itemised usage bill on the handset itself. It intimates users of charges incurred after every call, SMS or data session and saves that information on the device for future reference. Mubble does this via an advanced self-learning, offline-capable, on-device text analytics engine.

"His investment is a very powerful validation of our product and reflects Mubble's commitment to enabling smartphone adopters make a fear-free entry into the digital world," said Ashwin Ramaswamy, co-founder & CEO of Mubble.

Mubble was founded in 2013 by Ramaswamy, Pranav Jha and Raghavendra Verma. An alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, Ramaswamy has over 18 years of experience in telecom, retail and FMCG industries. He has had senior management stints with Bharti Airtel, Jubilant Retail and Johnson & Johnson. Jha, who is also chief operating officer, has previously worked with Infosys, BMC Software, OnMobile and other companies. Verma, who is also chief technology officer, was a founding team member at OnMobile.

Mubble claims that the app has clocked over half a million downloads in less than six months. The app is designed to work offline and is available in multiple Indian languages.

During a recent interaction with Techcircle.in, Ramaswamy claimed that Mubble is the only app in the world which provides usage-related data scraping and tracking on dual SIM phones. It's nearest global competitor is piBalance, a similar offering by a Russian entrepreneur that tracks single-SIM phones.

"Mubble brings unprecedented transparency and empowerment to the smartphone user, by democratising technology and solving key problems of smartphone adopters across India" Nilekani said.

This is Nilekani's first investment in a mobile technology product company. He had previously led a Rs 100 crore investment (with a personal investment of Rs 75 crore) in to Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, which runs India's top coffee chain under the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) brand among other businesses.