Artificial intelligence startup ParallelDots, which offers advanced image recognition solutions, on Monday said it has raised a Series A funding of $4.5 million (around Rs 34.2 crore) from US-based Multipoint Capital and Btomorrow Ventures, the venture arm of BAT.
The Seattle-based firm plans to use the fresh money to boost its roadmap for product development and expand global footprint. It also aims to strengthen product innovation to aid consumer-packaged goods (CPG) grow and navigate digital disruption better.
Founded by Angam Parashar, Ankit Narayan Singh and Muktabh Mayank Srivastava in 2017, ParallelDots offers AI-based application programming interfaces (APIs) to analyse large amounts of unstructured textual content.
The startup rolled out its flagship product ShelfWatch in 2018, helping CPG manufacturers and retailers optimise retail execution and maximise sales.
“This financing not only adds fuel to the growth engine that we are building, it will also help us further strengthen our products in collaboration with BAT. We are excited about entering into the next growth phase of the company where we will double down on our vision to help our clients achieve excellence in their retail execution by deploying our cutting-edge technology at scale,” said Angam Parashar, co-founder and chief executive officer of ParallelDots.
“BAT has a large global footprint, and we are excited to be partnering with ParallelDots on the journey to enhance retail execution,” said Vivek Chaudhri, group head of DBS marketing, BAT.
AI-based startups have been garnering investor attention for quite some time lately. In February, StartupBay, an accelerator invested $1.2 million (around Rs 8.9 crore) in Rocket AI to pick up a 10% stake.
In October last year, Light Information Systems, an artificial intelligence-based platform, raised $5.4 million in its Series A round of funding led by Pavestone Capital.