Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalkrishnan invests in Crayon Data

Bengaluru: Crayon Data Pte Ltd, a big data and analytics start-up based in Singapore and Chennai, has raised an undisclosed amount from Infosys Ltd co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, the company said.

The investment is part of Crayon’s Series A2 round of funding. Previous investors in the company include Jungle Ventures, Ratan Tata and Mitsui & Co. Ltd.

The company had earlier raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Jungle Ventures and Spring Seeds in 2013. Crayon Data was founded in 2012 by Srikant Sastri and Suresh Shankar.

It will use the funds to enhance its customer engagement and marketing platform named Maya, and to expand its global presence. Currently, Maya is used to run custom campaigns for companies in banking and hospitality sector.

In the banking segment, campaigns built by Maya can be used to target inactive or dormant customers, to activate new category spends, and for promotional campaigns. Maya has delivered over 20 million impressions for eight clients.

In hospitality, Crayon Data helps drive customer engagement for mid-sized hotel chains and traditional restaurants.

“In the past year alone, we have tied up with seven marque clients. We now work with leading banks in almost every geography. Maya currently knows the tastes of over 20 million customers worldwide. Our plan is to reach 100 million customers in a year, and reach the 1 billion mark in 2020,” Vikram Rao, chief executive officer of Crayon Data said in a statement.

Speaking on the investment, Kris Gopalakrishnan said, “I see that the future of business will be the ability to leverage AI and big data to create ‘personal’ digital experiences for millions of customers. Crayon has a unique ability to bridge multiple worlds: analytics to digital, offline to online, internal, and external data. This makes them as critical to credit cards, travel and hospitality, and retail enterprises, as a Bloomberg terminal is to traders today.”