DocSumo snags seed funding from Better Capital, Techstars

By Narinder Kapur

  • 10 Aug 2020

Acuvea Analytics Pvt. Ltd, which operates the document-focussed artificial intelligence startup DocSumo, has raised $220,000 (about Rs 1.64 crore at current exchange rates) in a seed funding round.

Participants in the fundraising exercise include early-stage venture firm Better Capital. US-based seed accelerator Techstars and Barclays also participated in this round, DocSumo said in a statement.

The Mumbai-based company was founded by Rushabh Sheth and Bikram Dahl, both of whom have been previously associated with Germany’s Rocket Internet.

DocSumo provides AI-backed workflow automation for financial services companies with a focus on saving back-office costs. It achieves these savings through methods such as document data capture, analytics and fraud detection.

The company says it will use the capital it has raised to build out sales channels in the US, as well as enhance its product for new use cases.

“Our aim is to build a ground-breaking AI solution that can read documents the way humans do and make data trapped in those documents actionable,” Sheth said.

Better Capital founder and chief executive officer Vaibhav Domkundwar said the firm was confident of its investment because of the potential of the segment the company is catering to.

The investment firm has previously backed financial-technology companies including Open, Khatabook, YAP and Rupeek.

DocSumo says it has a suite of application programming interface products for reading documents such as ID cards, bank statements and tax returns. It is also working with lenders and insurers to enable real-time customer onboarding and the reading of policy documents.

Deals in the frontier-tech segment

Overall investor and strategic interest in startups employing frontier technologies such as AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning has risen in the past several years.

Last week, video analytics platform Wobot raised pre-Series A funding from Sequoia Capital India. Its platform connects to closed-circuit television and other types of cameras and helps monitor process compliance.

Last month, Nexus Venture Partners led a $12 million Series A funding round in Sibros Technologies Inc., a Silicon Valley- and Pune-based startup that is focussed on connected vehicle software.

In June, enterprise AI platform NextBillion AI raised $7 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Falcon Edge Capital.

In May, photography firm Spyne raised pre-Series A funding from AngelList, along with participation from the Smile Group.