Data Collaboration Platform Atlan Raises Pre-Series A Round From WaterBridge, Others

Data collaboration platform Atlan has raised $2.5 Mn in a Pre-Series A round led by WaterBridge Ventures. US-based 500 Startups, Singapore’s Hatcher and other family office investors, including the Bhagchandka family fund, also participated in this round. Rajan Anandan, former Google India chief, and Sequoia Capital India MD, is an existing investor with Atlan.

Atlan was founded by Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka in 2018 and claims to help teams in large enterprises collaborate smoothly when working on data projects. Atlan brings internal and external data on an open platform, and helps in automating data-driven tasks for businesses. The funding from the latest round will be used for global expansion and leadership hiring. The company says it works with more than 200 firms around the world, including Unilever, Milkbasket, Barbeque Nation, WPP and GroupM, among others.

The core model of Atlan is that while businesses have invested in data teams and are using data as an asset, there are a lot of issues when it comes to using data freely across teams and functions for actionable tasks and to make decisions for projects. Atlan lets individuals across teams in a workplace collaborate using data for various projects by creating a collaborative interface, bringing together diverse data points from internal and external sources as well as processing tools and teams.

For example, data scientists, data teams and project managers get a clear idea of all the available internal and external data in one view, and don’t have to spend weeks or months working in silos to hunt down data points that already exist.

Sankar and Banka had earlier founded SocialCops, the social data intelligence platform which worked with government projects such as the National Data Platform and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana gas subsidy scheme. The duo launched Atlan after relaising that data is scattered across the ecosystem and it’s time to ensure that enterprises get the right data at the right time in an open manner for cross-functional use.

Big Data and using data to create a measurable impact is a critical aspect of new-age technology such as AI or machine learning, and it’s especially crucial in the Indian context where data is scattered and not readily available for enterprises. It’s all the more crucial for sectors such as fintech and healthtech, which rely heavily on data-driven models. With access to healthcare being a huge challenge, Indian healthtech startups are not yet focussing on data processing for the Indian market because of the challenge of structuring data for close to 1.3 Bn people who don’t speak the same language. Open and collaborative data platforms could definitely help bridge some of the gaps in this sector.