Indian Angel Network invests in SaaS startup Wizikey

Gurugram-based public relations (PR) solutions startup Wizikey Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs 2.5 crore ($360,000 at current exchange rate) from Indian Angel Network (IAN).

IAN members who led the funding round were: Alok Mittal, co-founder and chief executive, Indifi Technologies; Ambarish Raghuvanshi, co-founder and former finance chief, Info Edge; and Saumya Meattle, investor director, IAN.

Other investors include Ajai Chowdhry, co-founder, HCL; and Arun Duggal, chairman, ICRA (formerly Investment Information Credit Rating Agency), a subsidiary of global ratings agency Moody's. 

The capital infusion will be used by Wizikey to further develop its product offerings and scaling them up to cover multiple vernacular languages. The funding will also be used for enhancing the platform’s artificial intelligence- and machine learning-based capabilities to power its recommendation engine, along with optimising the quality of content creation. 

The end-goal of Wizikey is to help businesses choose the most relevant journalists for their brands. 

Wizikey is a SaaS-based product that enables businesses to discover relevant journalists, and send information to them via the platform. SaaS is Software-as-a-Service. Using algorithms that help relevant search and targeting, it claims to bring high efficiency in PR management.  

Wizikey also helps a company to maintain and record all their announcement activity. The Wizikey interface allows access to a list of 7,500 leading journalists across the country. Using the platform’s convenient search driver, companies can shortlist pertinent journalists based on keywords related to their businesses, industry or even competition, such as e-commerce, retail, or Amazon, said Bhargava.

Through its intelligent email systems, Wizikey also enables real-time feedback from journalists, thus eliminating the need for constant follow-ups that hamper business productivity.

Wizikey, launched in 2018, was co-founded by Aakriti Bhargava and Anshul Sushil, graduates from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), respectively.

Over the course of her 15-plus years as a PR expert, Bhargava has campaigned for technology companies such as Naukri.com, OYO, and Aspiring Minds. Sushil has been brand manager for HCL and led the HCL brand makeover with the multimedia campaign, ‘Technology that touches lives’. The duo has also founded BoringBrands, a communication consultancy startup.