Obviously AI Inc., which operates a data science startup focussed on services for non-specialist users, has raised funding.
The round has been led by Arka Venture Labs, the India and US-based accelerator and funding platform anchored by Blume Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures, Obviously AI said in a statement.
The company didn’t disclose the amount it raised.
“We realized that business users often cared about getting decision making insights about their customers, products and its usage, but often had to wait for weeks on a data engineer to get a single question answered,” Nirman Dave, co-founder at Obviously AI, said.
California-based Obviously AI was founded in 2018 by Dave and Tapojit Debnath. The firm says it uses natural language processing to break questions asked by users and then provides data insights based on the parameters of the question.
Other investors in the company include Berkeley Skydeck, Nvidia, Sequoia Capital’s Scout Fund and angel investors such as Amplitude backer Kevin Moore, Streamlabs founder Murtaza Hussain and Arthur Benhamou.
Arka Venture Labs was also set up in 2018. At that time, Blume said the firm would provide seed and pre-seed capital of up to $200,000 (around Rs 1.52 crore at current exchange rates). Apart from capital, Arka also provides mentoring, infrastructure and access to Silicon Valley networks for entrepreneurs.
Some of its other portfolio companies include First Hive, Jovian.ml and Revvsales.
Deals in the AI segment
Arka Venture’s bet on Obviously AI is another commitment by investors to a startup leveraging artificial intelligence-based technologies. Companies across sectors have begun using services provided by these startups for various functions, with a particular focus on reducing supply chain inefficiencies and costs, and actionable data.
Last month, Flixstock India Pvt. Ltd, which runs a fashion-focussed image technology startup, raised $2.5 million (approximately Rs 18.10 crore). The funding round was led by Wavemaker Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles and Singapore.
Also last month, the ISTAR Skill Development Pvt. Ltd-operated Salesken raised $8 million (around Rs 59 crore) from Sequoia Capital India as part of its Series A funding round. The deal also involved a secondary component that paved the way for the partial exits of existing investors Unitus Ventures and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF).
In February, the Mumbai-based Triton Investment Advisors invested in CamCom, a deep learning-based startup focussed on quality assessment, defect and damage detection. In January, field service automation startup Zinier Inc. raised $90 million (around Rs 638.52 crore) in a Series C funding round led by the US-based investment management firm ICONIQ Capital.
