Discovery platform NowFloats announces Series B funding from Iron Pillar, IIFL

Hyderabad-based NowFloats Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which helps local businesses create an online presence through its platform NowFloats, has announced that it has raised $10 million (Rs 73 crore) in Series B funding from venture capital (VC) fund Iron Pillar and IIFL (Seed Ventures Fund I & Cash Opportunities Fund).

Existing investors Blume Ventures and Omidyar Network also participated in the round, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

NowFloats Technologies plans to use the funds to scale up customer support and engagement, and to enhance the value proposition of the technology provided to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

"NowFloats' focus on product, and fundamental business sense resonates well with Iron Pillar's beliefs...We look forward to building the business beyond India through Iron Pillar's networks, especially in Asia-Pacific and the US," said Anand Prasanna, managing partner at Iron Pillar, in a statement.

VCCircle was the first to report in June 2016 that NowFloats was raising roughly $9 million from Iron Pillar, IIFL Wealth and existing investors. One person privy to the development had told VCCircle that the deal was signed in April itself.

In 2015, NowFloats raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding led by Omidyar Network. The funding round also saw participation from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and Hyderabad Angels.

NowFloats Technologies

Founded by Nitin Jain (COO), Jasminder Singh Gulati (CEO), Neeraj Sabharwal (CXO) and Ronak Kumar Samantray in 2012, NowFloats aims to enhance the local online discovery of SMBs. Its platform helps local businesses create and manage their search engine optimised websites, using a patent-pending process 'location-based SEO'. NowFloats claims to have over 230,000 customers, of which up to 80% are paid customers across channels.

"We at NowFloats want to re-define the market for business websites, where business owners only have to worry about the content on the website, and the technology takes care of other aspects like design, performance, discovery (SEO), marketing (SEM), enabling transactions (payment gateway) and customer/lead management, etc," said Sabharwal.