Bangalore-based Capillary Technologies Pvt Ltd, a cloud SaaS-based CRM solutions provider, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from American Express Ventures. Although the amount has not been officially disclosed, some media reports have pegged the amount at $4.5 million.
The capital will be used to expand its operations to new markets, such as China and Australia, and also to partner with the clients of American Express across the globe.
“American Express Ventures, along with Sequoia, Norwest and Qualcomm, are great partners as we expand our services in the US and other markets around the world,†said Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies. This is American Express Ventures’ first investment in India.
In September 2012, Capillary had secured $15.5 million in a Series A round of venture funding from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Qualcomm Ventures.
Capillary was set up in August 2008 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Reddy, Krishna Mehra and Ajay Modani. It is into cloud-based software solutions that help retailers engage with customers through mobile, social and in-store channels. The company caters primarily to the clients in the retail market with 40 per cent revenues from apparel, fashion and shoes, 30 per cent from food retail, 20 per cent from white goods and electronics and remaining 10 per cent from pharmacies and hypermarkets which is a growing and relatively new segment.
Incubated by IIT Kharagpur with a soft loan of Rs 15 lakh, Capillary had raised its first round of angel funding from Harminder Sahni, Naresh Malhotra and Qualcomm ($100,000 as the winner of QPrize). In January 2011, it raised a second round from Sahni and Malhotra besides new investors Rajan Anandan and Venkat Tadanki, along with a few others. The company had paid back the incubation loan to IIT Kharagpur in February 2011, after it became profitable in mid-2010.
In an interview with Techcircle.in last July, Reddy had said that Capillary’s cloud-based platform was used by more than 100 brands with presence in 10,000 stores spread across Southeast Asia, Greater China, the Middle East, South Africa, India, the UK and the US. Its customers include Pizza Hut, Puma, United Colors of Benetton, Mothercare, Robinsons, Store21, Sunglass Hut and Nike. Other players that Capillary competes with are SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com and a range of smaller players such as Mobiquest.
Capillary has offices in India (Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai), Singapore, the UAE (Dubai), the UK (London), the US (California), and South Africa (Johannesburg).
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
