Mumbai Angels Network, GHV Accelerator bet on DaveAI

By Debjyoti Roy

  • 13 Aug 2020
Founding team of Dave.AI

DaveAI, an artificial intelligence-based sales augmentation platform, has raised seed funding from investors led by the Mumbai Angels Network.

GHV Accelerator, IIIT Technology Venture Partners and Mohan Kumar, CEO of Crestere Technologies, also participated in this round, the startup said in a statement.

The Bengaluru-based startup, operated by Sociograph Solutions Pvt. Ltd, uses AI to help enterprises manage their sales processes and augment customers’ product discovery experience.

“This investment will help us enter new markets and sustain this growth at a global scale,” said Sriram PH, CEO at DaveAI.

The startup was launched in 2016 by Sriram, Ananthakrishnan Gopal and Ashok Balasundaram.

While Gopal had in the past worked with electronics giant Samsung’s R&D team, Sriram was a client partner at HCL. Balasundaram was a retail entrepreneur prior to co-founding DaveAI.

The company claims that DaveAI delivers increased conversion rates, optimised product mix and increases average order value per customer. DaveAI can also be used by brands to create sales experiences on the web, virtual reality and augmented reality.

The startup counts companies such as carmaker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Pidilite Industries, Landmark Group and some banks among its clients.

“The AR/VR technology has a vast market that offers a potential new way of interaction between customers and the world around us,” said Nandini Mansinkha, CEO at the Mumbai Angels Network.

Deals in the AI segment

Overall investor and strategic interest in startups employing frontier technologies such as AI and machine learning has risen in the past several years.

In July, enterprise AI platform NextBillion AI raised $7 million (around Rs 52.89 crore) in a Series A funding round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Falcon Edge Capital.

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

Also in May, multilingual AI business platform Vernacular.ai raised $5.1 million in its Series A funding round. The exercise was led by Exfinity Ventures and the IAN Fund.

In April, Inflection Point Ventures bet $400,000 on Vogueme Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates video meta-tagging and analysis platform Toch.