[Tech30] How Bengaluru-based Sprinkle Data is helping businesses optimise their data

Data management is crucial for running a business smoothly. Many startups and small businesses fall prey to the sheer misunderstanding that data handling is limited to only large corporates and organisations. Contrary to this, business data provides real value to the business. 

Given the size of any company, entrepreneurs make use of various software to handle crucial day-to-day business operations — right from ERP to stock-keeping software and digital accounting solutions. But how do they optimise the data? 

Managing several kinds of software is cumbersome and data collection requires huge manpower. Seeing this gap in the market and to ease the data management process, Sharad Agarwal started Sprinkle Data in 2017 in Bengaluru. 

A problem-solving product

Sprinkle Data is a data automation platform which helps businesses optimise and manage their data. Increasingly, companies have a tremendous amount of business data, which is becoming more fragmented and complex by the day due to the widespread adoption of SaaS and cloud platforms.

They struggle to bring this data on a single, integrated platform and thus, lose leveraging the full significance of their data. It requires huge investment and time to manage the transfer of data across multiple tools, verifying data quality, keeping reports up to date etc. 

As an engineer working in data for decades and observing the fast-changing pace of the data ecosystem, Sharad started Sprinkle Data to solve for customers by automating the entire data analytics journey, providing a 360-degree view in real-time at fraction of the cost so that businesses can focus on their core offering and need not worry about managing data. 

“I started Sprinkle Data because I noticed that many growing companies are trying to build some sort of in-house data platform. They try to hire distributed systems engineers, who, though are not only very cost-intensive, but there are not many on the market,” Sharad tells YourStory Media.

Sharad says that through Sprinkle Data, startups can scale their business using their data like the large corporations, without making huge investments. He adds that the unique thing about Sprinkle Data is that it works with the customer’s cloud provider and their existing tools that enable them to see results in less than one to two weeks. 

Target audience and the revenue model

Sprinkle Data’s target clients are marketplaces, fintech, and ecommerce companies. In three years, the company has acquired notable clients like Swiggy, Udaan, Yulu Bikes, BrightMoney, and more. 

“For any new client, we explain the value Sprinkle Data provides, show them the ROI, then have them try our platform,” Sharad explains.

Sprinkle Data’s revenue model is based on a few factors like a number of users, deployment model, and more. The company also has various plans with annual/monthly billing options and is growing 3x annually.

Challenges and the way ahead

Sharad says there have been many challenges and lessons learned from them.

“During the initial days when we were talking to potential customers about what they would like to see in the product, we started building what they were asking for, and later, we realised that it gave little ROI for those customers. So what we learned was the difference between what customers are asking for versus what they want and what they really need,” he adds. 

Sprinkle Data aims to raise funds at the right time and is focusing on expanding to Southeast Asia and North America markets.