Analytics firm Axtria raises $30 mn

Axtria, a data analytics services and solutions provider, has raised $30 million (Rs 190 crore) in its Series-C funding round which was led by Helion Venture Partners and participated by its existing investors Amar Sawhney, Rick Braddock and Fred Khosravi. Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Gururaj 'Desh' Deshpande also participated in the round.

Helion invested $15 million in this round. As a part of this funding, Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder and senior managing director of Helion, will join the board of Axtria.

The Gurgaon-based company was founded in 2010 by Jassi Chadha and Navi Chadha, both serial entrepreneurs. Their first venture MarketRx is considered as one of the successful companies in the analytics space. The company, in 2007, was acquired by Nasdaq-listed information technology services company Cognizant for around $135 million. "What impressed us is that this is started by a serial entrepreneur who was the founder chief executive officer of MarketRx that was eventually got acquired by Cognizant. And as you know that there are very few repeat entrepreneurs given that India's entrepreneurial cycle is just starting," Sanjeev Aggarwal of Helion told Business Standard.

"Analytics services is a $20+ billion market with plenty of headroom for growth. It is very clear that data driven analytics and generating insights from data requires a combination of man and machine and Axtria has leveraged India's statistical and mathematical talent very effectively to solve some of these challenges," he added. This is Helion's first investment in the analytics space.

Axtria which follows a hybrid delivery model employs around 500 people including around 100 in the US which is its key market. The firm with its proprietary analytical applications like SalesIQ, MarketingIQ and RiskIQ today supports over 60 global clients in areas like pharma, financial services, retail and high tech space among others.

With the fresh funding, the company intends to accelerate its hiring, product development and marketing apart from expanding into newer markets and verticals.

"We continue to experience tremendous success and demand for our data analytics solutions from across the industry verticals we operate in. We have thus far been funding the business with private capital. We are very proud to add Helion as a partner in our journey to build one of the largest companies in the data analytics industry," said Jassi Chadha, co- founder, Axtria.