Surge Startup Hevo Data Raises $4 Mn Seed Funding From Chiratae, Sequoia

Bengaluru and San Francisco based unified data platform Hevo Data has raised $4 Mn seed funding in a round led by Chiratae Ventures and Sequoia Capital’s early-stage accelerator programme Surge in October 2019.

Hevo Data is one of the 20 startups that graduated from the second edition of Sequoia’s Surge early-stage accelerator. The 16-week programme funds early-stage startups from India and other Southeast Asian countries, also offering cross-border support. The company’s first cohort was announced last year. Each startup in Surge bagged between $1 Mn and $ 2 Mn from the venture capital firm, with other investors also joining in, as seen in the case of neobanking startup Juno.

Founded in 2017 by Manish Jethani and Sourabh Agarwal, Hevo Data is a platform that helps understand their customers better by compiling data collected from multiple sources— CRM, advertising channels, marketing tech, financial system software and customer support products.

“We automatically combine data which is residing in different software systems, with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence make sense of that data to build a unified view of the customer,” Jethani told ET.

Hevo Data largely focuses on online commerce, financial technology and healthcare sectors, which rely heavily on customer data to drive sales. It plans to utilise this funding to expand its services in the US and other western markets.

Hevo Data currently provides its services across five nations with over 40 mid-size companies, and its portfolio also includes some big companies like LendingKart, Fynd, Ninjacart, Swiggy, Curefit, PharmEasy and Meesho.

The Bengaluru-based company charges $499 monthly for the ‘Starter’ version of its service and ‘$999’ for the ‘Business’ plan and a variable fee for ‘Enterprise’ version. The company claims to earn an average of $30K to $50K from each of its customers every year. Moreover, the company has claimed 800% year-on-year (YoY) growth in the last 12 months, with 60% of its clientele based in the US.

Other startups in this domain include Formcept, IntelligenceNODE, Indus Insights, Axtria, BRIDGEi2i, DataCultr, etc. According to DataLabs by Inc42, enterprise tech has seen a total capital inflow of $ 1.44 Bn in 2014-2018, third only to fintech and ecommerce sectors. These top three sectors accounted for almost 50% of the total $10.25 Bn-plus poured into growth-stage Indian startups in the same time period.