After successful exit, serial entrepreneurs from BITS Pilani set up Vahanalytics, raise Rs 1.3 cr funding

Mumbai-based analytics start-up Vahanalytics has raised Rs 1.3 crore seed fund from seed investment and innovation platform, Venture Catalysts led by Vikram Lakhotia and Anirudh Damani. The fresh round of funds will be utilized in hiring four to six senior professionals and deploy data servers for product enhancement.

We started out as an on-demand driver service and built a driving analytics module to help track and train our drivers. While doing so, we realised that there was a distinct lack of a similar scientific metric to quantify and judge driving behaviour as well as to identify and train drivers in areas which require improvement,” said, Shivalik Sen, Co-founder, Vahanalytics. 

Launched in 2016 by BITS Pilani alumni Shivalik Sen, Arun Gandhi, Nikhil Tavora and Someshwar Dash, Vahanalytics aims to improve drivers and roads through smarter data and machine learning. The platform captures real-time data about driving habits and road conditions using smartphones, which is then processed and refined by leveraging the power of Big Data in order to extract useful insights.

Earlier this month, the founders sold their on-demand chauffeur aggregator platform Driven to Chennai-based Driverskart. 

The target markets of Vahanalytics are logistics, transportation and on-demand deliveries and are currently running beta version with seven companies. They are planning to officially launch this platform between October to November this year and the revenue will be generated by SaaS-based subscription model.

In the next 15-18 months, Vahanalytics will expand to South East Asia and Europe market and by the end of 2016, it will likely penetrate into automobile insurance sector.

Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts, said,

Data analytics in transportation using telematics is the need of the hour. The space opens the door for almost limitless possibilities for implementation. The decision to invest into Vahanalytics was taken due to its strong founding team, its vision and its potential to create an excellent product.

Before Vahanalytics, Venture Catalysts has invested in startups such as vPhrase Analytics, Siftr, ConfirmTKT and LenDenClub. This platform is building a comprehensive ecosystem to nurture and support startups in fintech, artificial intelligence, cyber security and data-driven intelligent software sectors. Venture Catalysts (VCats) brings a combination of capital, mentoring and business network to help investee companies to succeed.

Moreover VCats is looking forward to integrate services to address the various start-up requirements on a single platform. It is planning to onboard about 800-1000 active angels in its platform in the near future.

Analytics market

With the requirement for making a business decision eventually shifting from hindsight- to foresight-based, companies are increasingly banking upon Big Data and analytics. According to an industry report by NASSCOM, in partnership with BlueOcean Market Intelligence, the analytics market in India is set touch $2.3 billion by the end of 2017-18.

Founded in 2004 by Dhiraj Rajaram, Bangalore-based Mu Sigma has been the pioneer in this space, and was later followed by a handful of emerging startups. Heckyl, Sigmoid Analytics, Flutura, Fractal Analytics, Crayon Data, Germin8 are some of the players in this space.

Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata has invested an undisclosed amount in two data analytics platform Crayon Data and Infinite Analytics.