Capillary, one of India’s most valuable enterprise start-ups having raised about $80 million in venture funding so far.
Bengaluru: Capillary Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which offers customer relationship management software and marketing analytics for retailers, has invested an undisclosed amount to buy a stake in business analytics start-up WebEngage.
The move to pick up a stake in the start-up, run by WebKlipper Technologies Pvt. Ltd, advances Capillary’s effort to become a comprehensive multi-channel retail software provider.
Capillary chief executive officer Aneesh Reddy confirmed the investment, but did not share any details.
Bengaluru-based Capillary, one of India’s most valuable enterprise start-ups having raised about $80 million in venture funding so far, is present in 30 countries across 20,000 stores, and makes software for offline retailers to manage customer information, drive promotions and derive data insights.
WebEngage makes software for e-commerce businesses to profile users and send targeted, personalized messages to them. Its clients include e-commerce firms eBay and Snapdeal, education portal Lynda.com and networking solutions provider Avaya.
The convergence of offline and online retail—called omnichannel—is a big market opportunity for both Capillary and WebEngage. Online retailers benefit from knowing what their customers buy in the offline world. For offline retailers, it is important to gain the loyalty of customers who have the option to shop across multiple devices as well as in physical stores.
WebEngage hopes to leverage Capillary’s large customer base to grow.
“It’s a partnership through which WebEngage services could be provided to Capillary’s customers and is largely about seamlessly transferring the data between the two systems, Capillary and WebEngage. As a user you are trying to do an activity in the brick-and-mortar store, and you are trying to do something in the online world. When you merge this data, you’re giving the retailer a consolidated view of the customer,” said Avlesh Singh, chief executive officer, WebEngage.
Mumbai-based WebEngage was founded in 2011, and received seed investment from venture firms GTI Capital and Blume Ventures in 2013.
Last year, Capillary acquired e-commerce software maker Martjack (Reasoning Global eApplications Ltd) and Ruaha Technology Labs Pvt Ltd, which helps companies derive insights from their data with the help of machine learning.
It also made a strategic investment in customer-engagement start-up CloudCherry Pte Ltd, after its most recent fund-raising of $45 million from Warburg Pincus LLC in September.
[“Source-Livemint”]