HaikuJAM Looks To Innovate Research Tool With Lightbox’s Funding

Mumbai-based venture capital firm Lightbox has led a $3.4 Mn (INR 24 Cr) funding round in social writing game HaikuJAM that allows people to make friends while writing together.

“HaikuJam is building an emotion engine that is unearthing insights about personal wellbeing and views on the world. What’s fascinating about HaikuJam is how they combine data to understand where and how to create a cost structure advantage in every aspect of their business, from product to content,” Sandeep Murthy, partner at Lightbox, said.

Besides Lightbox, Social Capital, Dunce Capital and HaikuJAM’s existing investor 2Enable Partners also participated in the round. The social writing platform is planning to use this funding to strengthen and scale its artificial intelligence (AI) powered consumer research tool, INSPO.

INSPO is a research tool on HaikuJAM’s portal that allows users to look up keywords to search for things other users associated with a given word. A senior executive told ET that the product is still in the beta-testing mode and will formally be launched this year.

Apart from just being a research tool, it also allows users to set writing prompts and get “inspiration points” around them within 30 minutes. The company clarifies that the tool is faster than traditional consumer research that takes three months to get fresh data.

HaikuJAM’s founder Dhrupad Karwa said, “One of the biggest sources of waste is when someone has the right product but is telling the wrong story. It’s a waste of energy, talent, and capital. INSPO helps minimise this waste by inspiring teams with new thinking and guiding them to the narratives that matter, leading to even better product experiences.”

Moreover, the company will also focus on expanding its force, especially in data science and AI teams. Currently, it has over 20 employees in its workforce. The Delaware-registered HaikuJAM has its headquarters in Mumbai.

Founded in 2015 by Karwa and two-London based investment bankers Neer Sharma and Andrew Leung, HaikuJAM is a collaborative writing game that allows users to connect over nothing but writing. The company goes by the tagline, “write together, feel better”.

HaikuJAM claims to have over 800K users, which it refers to as “Jammers”, from across 163 countries. The company also claims that over 40 Mn lines have been written on the platform and a new line is published every second.

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