Location-tech firm Locale.ai raises $1.3 mn from Chiratae, Better Capital

Location-based analytics firm Locale.ai on Thursday said it raised $1.3 million in a seed round from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures) and San Francisco-based Better Capital. Multiple angels participated in the round including Manik Gupta, former chief product officer, Uber; Khadim Batti, chief executive, Whatfix; Krish Subramanian, chief executive, Chargebee; Vivekananda HR, chief executive, Bounce; and Praveen Jadav, former chief executive of Paytm Money.

Locale.ai works with customers like Bounce, Dunzo and Omni, a Costa Rican taxi firm, to deliver insights and analytics on their location data. The start-up was founded in March 2019 by Aditi Sinha and Rishabh Jain – the two met during the previous stints at data start-up Atlan (formerly Social Cops).

“Businesses collect a ton of location-based data on their assets, users, and so on, which they seldom use to the fullest. We did not find a (software) product in the market that offers map-based and location-based analytics the way we do,” said Sinha, co-founder, in an interview with Business Standard.

For Dunzo, Sinha explained, the product helped the firm improve the utilization of its pay-per-use scooters, reduce idle time, and identify clusters based on utilization which ultimately advised its pricing algorithms. For other firms, such cab booking apps, Locale.ai helps in insights on the lines of “where bookings are the highest, and so the idle taxi capacity should be moved to those areas,” Sinha said.

The firm essentially builds modules and analyses data that helps companies find problematic or growth areas and take action on them. In those areas, depending on the industry, companies can use demand and supply behaviour to plan capacity, bridge supply-demand gaps or change pricing.

The product, which also offers a dashboard view of data, is given out as software-as-a-service (Saas) and priced based on the volume of data clients bring in. "We started with hyperlocal delivery and mobility companies but are now expanding into logistics and e-commerce companies as well," said Aditi, adding that the firm has clients in 9 countries.

The funding is also significant because of Chiratae Venture coming in at a seed round. Chiratae, a major investor behind Curefit, Flipkart, and Firstcry, typically invests in late-stage rounds. Other early-stage bets Chiratae made in the recent past include Goodmeetings and Mojo Care.

“We have witnessed the early impact of location-based automation on the transformation industries, especially in mobility,” said Karan Mohla, Partner, Chiratae Ventures, in a statement.

“Locale’s vision is to build the next generation intelligent platform on top of proprietary data sets to create revenue enhancing actionables for their clients. We are very excited with their approach focused on global enterprises in their focused verticals utilizing AI and intelligent geospatial analytics in an efficient and secured manner,” the statement added.