Tracxn, an analytics firm co-founded by Sequoia and Accel alumni to track data from startups, has raised a $3.5 million series A round from SAIF Ventures.
The company, which describes itself as “Gartner for startups information,” was launched in 2013 by Neha Singh, who was previously an investment analyst for Sequoia Capital, and Abhishek Goyal, a former associate at Accel Partners.
Tracxn currently has a team of 30 analysts and plans to use its new funding to increase that number to 150 by the end of this year, including hires in Southeast Asia and Europe. The company also plans to target a wider range of clients, including consulting firms and universities.
The company’s current clients include venture capitalists, private equity firms, and corporate development teams that use Tracxn’s data to spot investment, merger and strategic partnership opportunities in different sectors.
Tracxn’s data analysis technology first identifies promising companies and founders, before its analysts take a closer look at fundamentals and trends.
“As investors at our respective funds, we used to spend a lot of time just ‘discovering’ the companies out there and making sure we have seen the entire relevant ‘market landscape’ and comps while looking at a deal. This process of market scanning is repeated across various funds,” says Singh.
“We are essentially building this startup market landscape information centrally.”
Eventually, she adds, Tracxn wants to “reach a point where funds can rely on us for 100 percent of their deal discovery.”
That means investors can pick a sector, such as consumer robotics, and use the platform not only to understand the market, but also to find a handful of promising companies to contact. This process usually takes several weeks, but Singh says it can be shaved down to just a few hours with Tracxn’s information and tools.
While there are other data analytics tools that focus on startups, including Mattermark, Datafox, and CB Insights, Tracxn differentiates by focusing on helping clients understand the market first before they look at individual companies.
“Today if an investor has a thesis around robotics and wants to understand what plays exist in the market and which companies are innovating in each segment, none of the existing databases can solve this. The way we have solved it is by setting up a dedicated analyst for tracking each segment,” says Singh.
“Essentially, an investor can get up to speed on a sector like robotics within just a couple of hours. He can see the market landscape, analyze trends, and scan for interesting teams much more efficiently. This increase the comfort in outbound deal sourcing and deal prioritization immensely.”