DataWeave Secures Funding From Japan Based FreakOut Group; Plans Expansion In North America

Bengaluru- and Singapore-based data analytics startup DataWeave has secured an undisclosed amount in funding from Japanese ad-tech company, FreakOut Group. Other investors who participated in the round include existing investor Blume Ventures, Herb Madan, WaterBridge Ventures and undisclosed VC firms based in India and Singapore.

Post the transaction, FreakOut has also acquired a strategic stake in the startup.

The company will utilise the raised funds to expand its sales, marketing and customer success initiatives, focussing on North America. The company will also invest in scaling its data products.

Commenting on the investment, Yuzuru Honda, global CEO, FreakOut Holdings said, “DataWeave’s AI-based products solve hard problems for global enterprise customers who need competitive data and insights on a consistent basis. The company delivers real-time actionable insights, which can give businesses a huge competitive advantage across industries and geographies.”

DataWeave was launched in 2012 by Vikranth Ramanolla and Karthik Ramesh Bettadapura. It is a data analytics company that aggregates and organises data from around the web and across geographies to generate and provide relevant actionable insights important to a business’s decision-making process. It enables businesses to understand competition, monitor their brand, and optimises offerings for their customers.

Karthik Ramesh Bettadapura, co-founder, DataWeave said, “We have witnessed strong traction across all our target segments and geographies over the last year and a half, even in the highly competitive North America market. Customers choose us due to the actionability and scale of our insights and the simplicity of our solutions.”

In 2013, it raised $300K in a Pre-Series A round of funding from Blume Ventures, 5Ideas.in, Rajan Anandan, Times Internet Group and others, in 2013. The startups is also backed by Singapore-based investor Hiro Mashita and Japan’s Teruhide Suto.

Dataweave offers its products, broadly in two major segments: retail intelligence and brand analytics. In May 2016, the startup entered into a partnership with Acufan, a Tokyo-based company to enter the Japanese market. In the same month, it signed a deal with Singapore-based Capillary Technologies, an omnichannel engagement and commerce startup, to offer its products to Capillary’s  large client base.

The startup has also been a part of Nasscom’s Innotrek 2015 and Intech50 2015’s fourth batch as well.

Other players in the space include Cubebroot Technologies, Fractal Analytics, Tracxn, Crayon Data etc.