2015 marked many new achievements for the Indian Analytics Industry. This year had so many engaging news-stories in analytics that narrowing down the list was difficult. So, we decided to bucket them in five categories and cherry-pick a few in each, to help you catch a glimpse of the analytics in India, 2015!
Acquisitions
Two major acquisitions happened this year that marked a new chapter in the analytics industry.
Infosys acquired Noah Consulting: Infosys spent $70 million to purchase a Houston based, information management consultancy – Noah Consulting to bring next-generation data analytics. This acquisition is to provide end-to-end data management services to oil and gas clients of Infosys, covering everything from exploration to production.
Fractal Analytics acquired Mobius Innovations:
Fractal Analytics acquired Mobius Innovations, a mobile context awareness platform, to strengthen and deliver the company’s flagship – Customer Genomics®. Customer Genomics is a next generation customer intelligence solution that reflects what, how, why, when and where the consumers are likely to make purchase decisions!
Partnerships
Manthan rules the partnership bucket with 2 strategic partnerships to it’s credit. One was with Future Group and the other was with Simplify360.
While, Manthan partnered with Future Group to offer them multiple projects that drive analytics and information based innovation in retail business roles and contexts; the partnership with Simplify360 was to build the next-gen Digital CRM and Intelligence Solution for the Retail Industry and integrate it with Manthan’s product- Customer360.
Investments
We covered about twenty news-stories on Investments alone this year! However, we are listing the funding news that created a buzz in the analytics community:
Manthan Closed Series D Funding from Temasek and Norwest Venture Partners:
Manthan focuses on changing the perception of analytics in business by promoting its user-driven analytics products that can deliver real business solutions with direct impact on revenues. Earlier this year, in a Series D Funding, Singapore based investment company, Temasek and global growth equity firm, Norwest Venture Partners invested in Manthan which is focusing on ‘Consumerization of Analytics’.
Jigsaw Academy received funding from Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE):
Jigsaw Academy, the Bangalore-based, Online School of Analytics, received INR 20 Crores in funding from Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE). The company planned to use these funds to expand its offerings and to penetrate new markets. InteQuant Advisors, a leading advisory firm providing professional services in the field of fund raising and transaction support services were the sole financial advisors who facilitated this transaction.
Ratan Tata backed Infinite Analytics:
Infinite Analytics, a predictive analytics company out of MIT, bagged funding from Ratan Tata to bring its artificial intelligence based predictive analytics to newer sectors. Infinite Analytics has a super team from MIT with backgrounds in e-commerce, technology, data analytics, cognitive sciences, particle physics and image recognition. It is also associated with prestigious advisors such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee – the inventor of the World Wide Web, Deb Roy – Chief Media Scientist at Twitter, Erik Brynjolfsson – Director of Center for Digital Business at MIT and Rosemary Leith – Director of World Wide Web Foundation.
Logistics data start-up company LogiNext got the support from mobile commerce platform Paytm, which invested $10 million in the first round of institutional funding for the firm. Loginext’s big data analytics platform aimed to help courier companies to bring more efficiency in their delivery network by route optimisation and real-time tracking of their resources.
Ratan Tata made an investment in Crayon Data:
Ratan Tata made a personal investment of an undisclosed amount in Crayon Data, which is a big-data startup based in Singapore. Crayon Data has an ambitious vision to ‘simplify the world’s choices’. It’s flagship product Maya is a personalization engine that facilitates choice delivery for the banking, hotel and digital media verticals.
Tookitaki secured funds from Jungle Ventures, Blume & Rebright Partners:
Tookitaki, an Indian data intelligence startup secured $1 million (Rs 6.3 crore) funding from Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures. Japanese seed investor Rebright Partners and existing investor Blume Ventures also participated in the round. Tookitaki has built a consumer-insights platform that answers key decisions related to product sales, market share, customer growth and relevant consumer behavior for an enterprise.
Flytxt bagged $11 Million Investment by Sunrise Capital:
Big Data Analytics solution provider, Flytxt, closed an $11 million (INR 70 Crore approx.) funding round to finance its next phase of growth. The investment was led by Sunrise Capital, along with Flytxt’s present investors.
Vidooly got Rs 6.4 crore from Bessemer Venture Partners:
Noida-based Vidooly is an online video analytics start-up. It has raised Rs 6.4 crore from venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners. Vidooly helps content creators, brands and multi channel networks build an audience base on YouTube and earn more revenues.
SIDBI invested $2.4 million first round in Pragmatix:
Enterprise analytics start-up Pragmatix raised its first round of institutional funding of $2.4 million from SIDBI Venture Capital. Pragmatix provides actionable intelligence through data models and products which solve specific business problems.
Analytics firm Axtria raised $30 million
In a Series-C funding round led by Helion Venture Partners, Axtria augmented $30 million (Rs 190 crore). Gurgaon-based Axtria is a data analytics services and solutions provider. Along with existing investors Amar Sawhney, Rick Braddock and Fred Khosravi, Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande also participated in the round. Moreover, Helion invested $15 million in this round; and as a part of this funding, co-founder and senior managing director of Helion joined the board of Axtria.
Cloudcherry Analytics secured funds from The Chennai Angels & IDG Ventures India
Cloudcherry Analytics Pvt.Ltd., a Chennai-based SaaS product company secured funding of about $1 million from The Chennai Angels (TCA) and IDG Ventures India. This was Cloudcherry’s first external funding round and was a co-investment by The Chennai Angels and IDG Ventures India. Cloudcherry is a real time, Omni-channel Customer Sentiment Mapping SaaS product that helps brands track, measure and improve Customer Delight in Real-Time.
Hansa Cequity raises Rs. 30 Cr from ASK Pravi
Hansa Customer Equity, which provides consulting services in Customer Strategy, Data Management, Analytics, Campaign Management, CRM & Digital Services to leading brands raised Rs. 30 Crore from PE firm ASK Pravi to fund its next phase of growth.
Launch
This year also saw the launch of innovations in the Indian analytics ecosystem. On one hand, Manthan launched it’s next generation tool – Customer360 for marketers, through which they could gain actionable customer insights even from large amounts of multi-structured data quickly and cost effectively.
Additionally, TCS launched an app for analytics in UK polls. ‘ElectUK’ was developed by TCS India, to engage voters, their representatives and political commentators by turning their smartphone into a Big Data social media analytics tool. The app is free to download and is available on both iOS and Android devices. It allowed users to track, analyse and visualise Twitter conversations about the UK General Election that were held in May 2015.
Moreover, Qlik was the first in Business Intelligence to deliver Data-as-a-service. It is a leader in visual analytics and it’s offering comprised of multiple services. The Company introduced Qlik® DataMarket, a Data-as-a-Service offering via Qlik Cloud, along with Qlik® Sense Cloud for free sharing and Qlik® Sense Charts for sharing visualizations on public sites.
India also saw first of it’s kind partnership (in India) when Subhash Ghai’s Film school joined hands with Vidooly, a Video marketing and analytics startup. Vidooly partnered with Subhash Ghai’s Whistling woods Film school, to serve as the default tool for video analytics and video marketing for the students of the Film Institute.
Development of Analytic parks in India
Last, but not the least, we saw two cities in India – Kolkata and Hyderabad taking the initiatives for proposals of development of analytic parks, but for different reasons. Read on to find out more!
West Bengal state government to woo IT at Analytics City
Keeping up with its smart city initiatives, the state 
government decided to develop an ‘Analytics City’ somewhere near Kolkata to woo reputable IT firms dealing in data analysis. It will have the infrastructure of a smart city with residential and commercial complexes and other facilities.
Data Analytics Park for Hyderabad
After the successful launch of India’s largest technology hub, the Telangana government is toying with the idea of creating a Data Analytics Park to tap employment opportunities in this rising sector by imparting the requisite skills among students. Moreover, the government has already launched the biggest incubation centre at IIIT Hyderabad and also started Technology Entrepreneurship Programme at ISB to further the entrepreneur skills among students.
We would like to conclude by saying that an important part of preparing for the New Year is not limited to reviewing the past year, but also to learn from it. With this thought, we hope you stay par with the trends of this year as you prepare to welcome another new year.
