TechSparks Tech30 finalist Realbox secures $300K Pre-Series A round
TechSparks is the kind of event that gives immense exposure to startups amongst various stakeholders of the community. Securing capital is one of the important aspects of the startup journey, and exposure at TechSparks works as a catalyst in the process. To put things in context, TechSparks Tech30 alumni have secured over $650 million in risk capital from top-notch investors across seven editions of the event.
Within a week of presenting at TechSparks 2016, Realbox announced raising a $300,000 Pre-Series A round. The round was led by Hyderabad Angels, and saw participation from Alok Mittal, ex-MD, Canaan Partners, Dharamveer Singh Chouhan, Zostel CEO, and Shubranshu Pani, Director JLL, as well as vCommission.
Realbox uses business intelligence and predictive analysis tools to help offline businesses increase revenues and decrease risk. Saurabh Moody, co-founder and CEO, said,
An invitation from TechSparks 2016 overwhelmed us with emotion. Realbox- a tech30 company! We were ecstatic to be recognised for our work. As we have all heard, it is a great platform and so many startups owe their first investor meet, first customer to them. While we were experiencing it all this once, we were fortunate to be a part of this and our inbox is a valid testimony to YourStory's effort and impact.
Backstory
Experienced in creating solutions for offline businesses and having previously sold a data analytics startup in 2014, Saurabh and Arjun Sudhanshu thought of building something for the hospitality sector. Soon, they met a restaurateur, Preksha Kaparwan. “I used to slave away 80 percent of my day in just matching the right data for the operations while my actual job was to run the restaurant and create an experience. This brought us to realise that most offline businesses have difficulties as the entire process of business intelligence (gathering data to make predictive analysis) is manual at every stage,” says Preksha.
This specific pain point in the hospitality sector led the trio to float Realbox Data Analytics. The company’s flagship product, Pulse, provides decision-makers with business summaries and key performance metrics on their mobile devices in real-time. It primarily helps businesses remain agile and in control of their operations.
Pulse is like Google Analytics for offline businesses. Saurabh says,
It can be integrated into any kind of point of sale (POS) system to provide key metrics to business owners. The idea is to enable decision-makers to remain in control, make targeted offers, track sales and conversions, and proactively take corrective measures when required.
Saurabh is a serial entrepreneur and a Microsoft alumnus with over 17 years of experience in integrating engineering and data sciences; Preksha plays a key role in product design and staff training; and Arjun is the POS integration and data mining expert.
So far, Realbox has five big customers in the B2B space, the most prominent one being PVR Cinemas (across 500 locations). So far, it has been bootstrapped, and claims to be a profitable unit. The company generates revenues through a combination of a one-time setup fee and a recurring monthly charge.
Pulse is available as a multi-user, multi-store application, and a small additional licence fee is charged per store. The company’s current revenues are in the range of Rs 2–3 crore per annum. Saurabh explains:
We are priced at a very affordable monthly subscription that varies between Rs 1,000 and Rs 5,000 depending on the size of business, with an upfront one-time investment of Rs 10,000 for each licence.
On the competition front, Realbox competes with Capillary Technologies along with a slew of other data analytics platforms.
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