Marketing automation startup Betaout raises $1.5M

Noida-based Betaout, which operates a SaaS (software as a service)-based customer intelligence and marketing automation platform for e-commerce firms, has raised $1.5 million (around Rs 9.9 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding from a group of investors.

The investors who have participated in the round include Stanford Angels, LetsVenture, Chennai Angels, Hyderabad Angels and Mumbai Angels.

Freshdesk founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham, Match Group CEO Sam Yagan and former chief people officer of Flipkart Mekin Maheshwari also participated in this round.

The company will use the funds to hire professionals across technology, marketing and account management as well as for customer acquisition and expanding into other Asian markets, it said in a statement.

In August, Betaout raised $500,000 (Rs 3.2 crore) in seed funding from Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl, People Group founder and CEO Anupam Mittal, Ibibo Group founder and CEO Ashish Kashyap, Redbus co-founder Phanindra Sama and others.

Founded in October 2014 by Ankit Maheshwari, Raghubir Thakur, Arjun Maheshwari, Nandini Rathi and Mayank Dhingra, Betaout  is a SaaS-based marketing automation platform for e-commerce companies. The platform allows customers to build user intelligence databases and provides tools to engage with users through email, live chat and SMS, among other channels.

The startup, run by Retention Nine Technologies Pvt Ltd, plans to open sales offices in Mumbai and Bangalore.

Betaout, which was accelerated through the TechStars Chicago 2015 programme, has over 40 customers.  It claims to be revenue positive and hopes to achieve breakeven within 12 months. The company counts Paytm and Indonesian C2C marketplace Tokopedia among its customers.

"In 2016, we plan to grow customer base in India and expand to other Asian markets, including Indonesia and Malaysia," said Ankit Maheswari, CEO of Betaout.

In January, San Francisco- and Bangalore-based BlueShift Labs Inc, a big data-powered marketing automation startup, raised $8 million (Rs 53.2 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Storm Ventures.