HexOctane, an Internet of Things startup, is in early talks to raise $2-2.5 million in a round led by San Francisco-based venture capital firm Emergent Ventures, Jhenkar Dixit, founder and chief executive of the venture, said.
The startup will deploy the funds towards product upgradation, business development and growth. It will also develop a new feature based on virtual reality to enhance a user's app experience, Dixit told VCCircle, confirming the development.
Emergent Ventures did not respond to email queries from VCCircle at the time of publishing this report.
The two-year-old startup provides navigation and gamification services through smartphones to users attending live events. HexOctane’s clients include the Indian Premier League, the Indian Super League, and the Kabbadi World Cup, amongst others.
HexOctane was founded in 2015 by Dixit, an alumnus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting up, he worked at tech firms such as Hewlett-Packard and VMware in the US, a report in newsmagazine The Week said. Dixit launched his first venture in high-performance computing in Silicon Valley, the report added.
“Ever since my school days, I was very fond of sports and used to go to different stadiums as a spectator. I used to find that many sports fans were dedicated to the game and wanted to be fully immersed in them,” Dixit was quoted as telling The Week.
Proximity technology can be integrated into existing Android and iOS apps and users can access the features just as an app update, the report added.
Emergent Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in IT, particularly enterprise tech such as IT infrastructure, data management, security and business applications, information on the VC firm’s website shows. The company backs startups in Silicon Valley and India and invests from the seed stage till the Series A round.