Kalaari provides Series A for India big data start-up
Kalaari Capital has committed $3 million in Series A funding to Germin8, a Mumbai-headquartered big data analytics company.
The proceeds will be used to support overseas expansion plans and for research and development. "The social media analytics space is an open sky, we look to consolidate our position as a significant analytics player in the Indian market and to venture into newer markets," Germin8 said in a statement.
Founded in 2007, the company's flagship product is Explic8, a stakeholder insights and engagement platform that collects and analyzes conversations in real time from public and private sources - such as social networks and email - creating data sets that can be fed into business strategy.
Germin8 employs about 50 people and its client base includes ICICI Prudential, Johnson & Johnson, Marico and MTV.
"Today, no company can afford to underestimate the impact of social media on its business and Germin8 allows companies to monitor, analyse and take the right business decisions in a timely way," Kumar Shiralagi, managing director at Kalaari, told The Economic Times.
Private equity and venture capital investors continue to target India's big data companies, essentially betting on the natural evolution of IT-related knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) industries that have served the country so well.
The stand-out deal remains General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital's $108 million Series D round for Mu Sigma in 2012, but there have been numerous smaller transactions.
Last week, Nexus Venture Partners and Avalon Ventures re-upped in Indix Corporation via a $8.5 million Series A-1 round of funding. The company runs a software-as-a-service (SaaS) and big data platform that allows brands, retailers, and developers to organize and analyze product-related information such as prices, promotions and product descriptions.
This is Kalaari's second investment in a fortnight, following a $10 million round for online jeweler Bluestone, in which existing investors Accel Partners and Saama Capital also participated.
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