One97 Mobility Fund (OMF) has invested an undisclosed amount in Dexetra, a mobile product start-up based in Bangalore. The company has built a mobile application called Iris that uses artificial intelligence for personalised search on mobile. Iris for Android smartphones has seen more than one million downloads within a month of its launch, according to Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chairman and managing director of One97 Communications Ltd. It has also answered tens of millions of user queries.
“For over a year, the team of Dexetra has been building Iris, a highly personalised and intelligent answering engine for mobiles. You can talk to Iris on your phone just like you talk to someone who knows a lot about you and your world,” a statement said.
Based on one’s mobile usage behaviour and various APIs (application programming interfaces) on the Web, Iris uses its proprietary context-building and semantic maps technology to provide answers to users’ questions, the statement added.
“One97 offers unique insight and window to the world of mobility and telecommunications” added Narayan Babu, CEO of Dexetra SS Ltd. “The investment brings to Dexetra valuable mentorship and experience, along with the round of funds.”
In July, OMF invested S$1 million in Singapore-based mobile gaming company TheMobileGamer. Earlier this year, One97 had also invested in Ciqual (a Scotland-based mobile broadband customer service solutions firm), along with Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and current Scottish investor Par Equity.
SAIF Partners and Intel Capital-backed One97 had also invested in companies like Oorja (a customer analytics firm) and Paytm (a mobile commerce platform).
