Customer engagement platform ZineOne raises $2.5M led by Omidyar Network

ZinOne will use the funds to accelerate sales and marketing, and execute a product roadmap focused on building the most intelligent system within this category.

ZineOne on Tuesday announced that it had raised $2.5 million in a Series A round led by Omidyar Network, the Silicon Valley-based impact investing firm established by Pierre Omidyar, the Founder of eBay.

Other investors in this round include Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, Touchstone Equities, as well as existing investors Hyderabad Angels and Golden Seeds. Anthill Ventures was an advisor to this round. The Series A round of investments brings ZineOne’s total venture capital received to date to $5 million.

The story so far

Founded in 2013, ZineOne is a customer engagement hub that uses machine learning algorithms to provide banks and retailers with the ability to engage with their customers real-time, in a contextual and personalised manner.

ZineOne noted their USP involves providing enterprises with a dynamic platform for agile experimentation, with no impact to their existing release cycles and without changing legacy systems. The company analyses data that consumers have already opted to provide to their bank or retailer in a anonymised manner, ensuring consumer’s privacy and data security.

The platform also helps enterprises connect the dots between different customer data streams and create actionable insights that can be used while customers are interacting with their brand in real time—such as in a branch or store, at their e-commerce website or mobile app.

ZineOne noted that it currently enables more than 100 million users, processing over five billion events a year, and generating 100 gigabytes of data every hour worldwide.

In the US, the company works with one of the top five retailers in the country, connecting all its digital and physical channels and delivering three to five times more sales conversions through personalised, contextual messaging with customers through various touch points.

Debjani Deb, ZineOne CEO, noted that more and more enterprises around the world are recognising the need to move their customer engagement efforts beyond emails and call centres into an immediate, contextual, and real-time world. He said,

“2018 presents an inflection point in the industry, and with this new funding, ZineOne is well positioned to lead the market in this emerging segment.”

While ZineOne has its headquarters in the US, it also has presence in India, mainly in the financial sector. The startup noted that on average it has helped its client banks increase transaction completion rates up to 20 percent—capturing transactions that were previously abandoned when users moved from channel to channel.

HDFC Bank, India's largest private bank, currently leverages ZineOne's value proposition across all its digital channels and is estimated to have seen significant gains in customer engagement, including three times the clickthrough rate than with traditional methods.

Ken Miller, venture partner at Omidyar Network and ZineOne’s newest board member is optimistic about his portfolio company's ability to cater to banks, retailers and consumers and better serve their unique needs. He noted,

“We are excited to see how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other new technologies are coming together to personalise and enhance the consumer experience.”

 Sector overview and future plans

The emerging category of customer engagement hubs is expected to disrupt an estimated $10 billion currently spent on marketing automation and customer experience software worldwide, by moving the industry away from batch emails, push messaging, and call centres, to “in the moment” interactions. On the global front Astute Solutions, Astute Solutions and Servion are some of the prominent names in the this space.

ZinOne intends to use the newly raised funds to accelerate sales, marketing, and execute a product roadmap that is focused on building the most intelligent system within this category, with significant investments toward securing top talent in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The company’s mission is to help traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises re-imagine customer engagement in a new, real-time, high-touch digital world.

Webite- www.zineone.com