Chennai- and Singapore-based Big Data and analytics startup Crayon Data Pte Ltd has secured more than 1.75 million Singapore dollars ($1.4 million) in second round of funding from Ravi Thakran, CEO of L Capital Asia and head of LVMH Asia Pacific, and Ravi Mantha, president, TIE Singapore.
William Bissell, MD, Fabindia; Meng Wong, co-founder, Joyful Frog Digital Incubator in Singapore and Ernest Pomerantz, chairman, Stonewater Capital also participated in the round.
Crayon will use the capital to enter strategic markets and also for product development.
“The success of this round reflects a valuation increase of 75 per cent from the previous round of funding, which was concluded at the end of 2012,†said Crayon Data’s founder director Suresh Shankar.
Crayon Data was founded in 2012 by IIM Calcutta alumnus Shankar. Prior to setting up Crayon, he was director - analytics (global process services) at IBM. He earlier founded RedPill Solutions Pte Ltd which was acquired by IBM in 2009. Previously, he was VP (marketing) at ABN Amro. Last month, former Vivaki India chairperson Srikant Sastri joined the company as a co-founder.
Crayon aims to build a platform-based Big Data venture that challenges the conventional people-led model of analytics, and delivers real business solutions by bringing together enterprise, public, external internet and social data to a single platform. It currently offers two products: Simpler Choices and One Drop Analytics. The first one helps consumers and businesses make better-informed and smarter decisions, while One Drop Analytics boosts B2B sales & marketing intelligence and demand generation by providing deep integrated insights on companies and markets. The firm's key focus verticals are hospitality, finance, retail and technology. Crayon has a key development centre in Chennai in India.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)