
Accenture buys Flutura to boost industrial AI services

Summary
The deal is likely to have paved the way for exits of Flutura's existing investors - Vertex Ventures, Lumis Partners and The Hive.NEW DELHI : Global IT services company Accenture has acquired Flutura Decision Sciences and Analytics, a Bengaluru-based industrial internet of things (IoT) startup, for an undisclosed amount.
The deal is likely to have paved the way for exits of Flutura's existing investors - Vertex Ventures, Lumis Partners and The Hive.
Accenture expects Flutura, operated by Flutura Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd, to strengthen its industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) services to boost the performance of plants, refineries, and supply chains, while also enabling clients to accomplish their net-zero goals faster. The acquisition will be used to serve Accenture’s clients in energy, chemicals, metals, mining, and pharmaceutical industries, it said.
This is at least the third bet by Accenture in the AI domain space in India. Previously, it bought Bridgei2i and Byte Prophecy in 2021 and 2020, respectively.
Flutura was launched in February 2012 by Derick Jose, Krishnan Raman and Srikanth Muralidhara. The company’s flagship software platform, Cerebra, provides diagnostics and prognostics through machine learning and AI to unlock value for engineering and energy customers, according to the statement.
Industrial engineers and data scientists can also quickly develop digital models of industrial assets on Flutura’s AI platform, which processes data from disparate IT and operations technology systems.
Flutura had secured its last institutional round of funding from Vertex Ventures and Lumis Partners in 2017.
The startup, which was accelerated by Microsoft Ventures as part of the Hi-Po Scale-up programme, had also received funding from big data startup fund The Hive.
In 2018, the startup had also raised $1 million in funding from an arm of Japanese conglomerate Hitachi Ltd.
Flutura runs operations in Houston (the US), Singapore, Netherlands and Bengaluru. Its clients include Henkel, Stewart & Stevenson, and Sodexo, among others. Flutura has around 110 employees.
Senthil Ramani, senior managing director and Applied Intelligence lead for growth markets at Accenture, said Flutura can aid with carbon intelligence to reduce emissions, energy consumption and lost output due to unplanned downtime of industrial assets.
“This acquisition will power industrial AI-led transformation for our clients globally and particularly in Australia, South-East Asia, Japan, Africa, India, Latin America and the Middle East," Ramani said.
Applied Intelligence is Accenture’s AI offering to enterprises. The platform aims to enable its clients to make use of AI without the need for deep data science expertise.
It offers organizations and non-data scientists the tools and data required to apply pre-configured self-learning industry solutions to help them assemble applications.
Accenture has been building its data and AI capabilities for clients through acquisitions.
Last year, it had acquired data sciences firm, Albert, in Japan.
Its other recent AI acquisitions include Analytics8 in Australia, Sentelis in France, Bridgei2i and Byte Prophecy in India, Pragsis Bidoop in Spain, Mudano in the UK, and Clarity Insights, End-to-End Analytics and Core Compete in the US.