Infilect Technologies Pvt Ltd, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that provides retail-focussed visual intelligence, has raised $1.5 million (Rs 11 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round.
The round in Bengaluru-based Infilect has been led by Mela Ventures and 1Crowd. The Chennai Angels also participated in this round, the startup said in a statement.
Mela Ventures is a fund floated by at least two co-founders of software services company Mindtree Ltd. The firm marked the first close of its maiden investment vehicle last month at Rs 130 crore (around $17.5 million).
1Crowd is a crowdfunding-based startup investment platform, which connects investors with companies and provides the latter with other capital and co-investment solutions.
As part of this investment, Mela Ventures’ investment committee member Rostow Ravanan will join Infilect’s board of directors.
Infilect was set up in 2015 by Anand Prabhu Subramanian and Vijay Gabale, who have worked at companies including Bell Labs and IBM Research.
The company’s platform uses image recognition and artificial intelligence to help retail brands and firms accelerate their decision-making processes.
It will use the capital it has raised to expand its go-to-market programmes and invest in its technological infrastructure, with a focus on retail execution, supply-chain optimisation, store personalisation and category planning.
“Globally today, retail brands lack visibility into presence, placement, positioning, and performance of retail products across a large number of retail stores. The final frontiers, the retail shelves, largely remain undigitised, resulting in out-of-stocks and overstocking,” Subramanian said.
Mela Ventures managing partner NS Parthasarathy said Infilect’s platform would be able to help decision makers across all levels in a retail ecosystem. “We see a great potential in team Infilect to build a world-class enterprise SaaS company out of India,” he added.
