Exclusive: Ecommerce search engine Skoov raises $150K

Mumbai-based Skoov Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company behind the six month-old ecommerce product search engine Skoov.com, received $150,000 (Rs 1 crore) from an individual investor, its co-founder Gaurav Bhardwaj told VCCircle.

Skoov, which currently has six people including its co-founders Bhardwaj, Samarjeet Reen and Amit Sathe, claims to work with 45 e-commerce sites and help customers search and find 3.7 million products.

The company is setting up a technology centre in Bangalore under its chief technology officer Anand Balachandran Pillai, former senior principal engineer at Yahoo, and plans to hire four more product engineers. "We want to build a lean but high-quality team," Bhardwaj said.

Skoov claims that its proprietary ecommerce enabling technology helps customers make buying decision within three clicks. He said the company has plans to launch a technology product for search optimisation and expand its presence in product search.

He said the firm has just begun talks with institutional investors for a Series A round of $3 million (Rs 20 crore). "We expect to finish

fundraising in the next three to six months," Bhardwaj said.

He, however, declined to reveal the name of the seed investor as the latter prefers to remain anonymous at the moment.

Bhardwaj, Reen and Sathe, who previously worked in IT services, technology and advertising industries, formed Skoov Technologies in April this year. Reen is CEO of the company while Bhardwaj is chief marketing officer and Sathe head of strategies.