Bengaluru-based e-commerce solutions and consultancy firm Ace Turtle Services Pvt. Ltd has appointed former Infosys executive Kapil Bhatia as chief technology officer, a company statement said.
In his new capacity, Bhatia will develop the firm’s flagship product Rubicon by using artificial intelligence, the statement added.
“As the business is scaling up in India and south-east India, we are investing more and more towards building our technology capability and creating a robust platform powered by smart and efficient artificial intelligence,†said Nitin Chhabra, co-founder and chief executive of Ace Turtle.
A mechanical engineer and alumnus of the University of Central Florida, Bhatia has close to two decades of professional experience and before joining Ace Turtle, he was the CTO at Bangalore-based Delightful Gourmet Pvt Ltd, which operates online meat and fish ordering platform Licious.
Prior to that, he had a five-year stint at IT services major Infosys, where was the principal technology architect and worked on a project that involved an e-commerce marketplace. Earlier, he had also worked at Tech Mahindra, Convergys and BPL.
“The Rubicon platform provides the benefits of engaging and seamlessly integrating both online and offline platforms for enterprise retail brands. With the aim to develop the platform further through artificial intelligence, I am looking forward to increasing the capabilities of Rubicon,†said Bhatia.
Bhatia’s appointment comes at a time when Ace Turtle is embarking on an overseas expansion drive. In October, the company had partnered with Nina Van, a Southeast Asian logistics company to enable last mile delivery in Singapore and Malaysia.
In a recent interaction with VCCircle in September, Ace Turtle chief operating officer and co-founder Berry Singh said that the company will set up shop in Singapore and Malaysia, before gradually expanding to other countries in Southeast Asia. It has also identified the Gulf Cooperation Council as a potential region for expansion.
The startup, founded in 2013 by Singh and Chhabra, helps offline brands go online by providing technology, customer support, marketing solutions and analytics via an integrated platform.
The company’s flagship offering, Rubicon, combines functions like order management, inventory management, logistics management and catalogue management. It is now developing an omni-channel analytics platform to track and analyse consumer data.
Ace Turtle’s solutions are currently used by more than 20 large brands that include Ray Ban, Puma, Max, Arrow, Flying Machine, Ed Hardy, US Polo, Fossil and more.
Ace Turtle has also raised more than $5 million through a mix of both equity and debt from Vertex Ventures, the venture arm of Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings; C31 Ventures, the venture arm of Singapore-based real estate developer CapitaLand; and Innoven, the venture debt arm of Temasek.
The firm has also recently hired senior executives, which include director of product management Subroto Chowdhury (a former business consultant at Infosys); director of engineering Amit Kriplani (former tech lead at ed-tech startup Simplilearn); director of product management Prerna Modi (former product lead at Jabong), and director of product engineering Parsuram Panigrahi (formerly with multinational retailer Tesco).