IAN Fund invests in Corner, a SaaS platform for D2C Ecommerce Brands
Pic: Arun (left) and Jovis (right) with Sarika and Sujesh from the Corner team
Corner provides data-driven customer engagement for D2C e-commerce stores through a SaaS model. This fundraise will help the company to expand its engineering & customer success teams.
New Delhi, December 7th, 2021: Corner, a Software-as-a-Service platform that provides data-driven customer engagement products for D2C e-commerce stores, has raised a funding round led by IAN Fund. With this raise of INR 50 lakhs, it will start to expand its core engineering and customer success teams and further enhance its product features.
Arun Augustine co-founded Corner with Jovis Joseph in 2019 at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore during the Startup Launchpad program organized by NSRCEL. The company is based in Kerala and is incubated by the Kerala StartUp Mission (KSUM), the state nodal agency of the Government of Kerala for entrepreneurship development. With a vision to provide an Intelligent Customer Data Platform (CDP) for D2C e-commerce brands, Corner is committed to transforming customer engagement for this rapidly growing e-commerce segment.
The company caters to brands and online merchants owning their e-commerce stores. Corner provides a data-driven layer to improve customer engagement for such D2C brands. Corner is architecting for fast growth, partnering with platforms like Shopify which has more than 1.75 million merchants.
Commenting on the fundraise, Jovis Joseph, Co-Founder, Corner said “Ever since inception, our mission at Corner has been to democratize access to data-driven customer intelligence tools for D2C brands. This way they can be competitive with big players like Amazon or Flipkart. With these freshly raised funds, we are looking at strengthening our engineering and customer success teams and accelerating our product roadmap.”
Prior to this, the founders bootstrapped the company, with money raised from family and friends, and leveraged an INR 7 lakh equity-free grant from the Kerala StartUp Mission (KSUM).
Padmaja Ruparel, Founding Partner, IAN Fund added, “In the past few years, the D2C model has witnessed a massive uptick in India. Many new-age brands have eliminated the middlemen and taken the D2C route. This has enabled brands to reach consumers faster and cater to them more efficiently. Catering to the D2C brands on Shopify, Corner engages its customers with data-driven intelligent solutions. We are glad to be associated with them.”
Expatiating on the fundraise, Kerala Startup Mission commented, “KSUM’s association with Indian Angel Network Fund is very fruitful and the fund is proactively involved in the Kerala Startup ecosystem. We expect IAN will invest more funds in Kerala Startups. The investment in Corner will certainly add value and build confidence to the Investor ecosystem of the state.”
About Indian Angel Network:
Indian Angel Network is India’s first and world’s largest business angel network with close to 500 members across the world, comprising the who’s who of successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs. With investors from 12 countries, IAN’s presence spans 7 locations, which includes cities in India and the UK. The network is sector agnostic and has funded start-ups across 17 sectors in India and 7 other countries growing global footprint companies. With an excellent track record, IAN has been giving excellent cash exits year-on-year to its investor-members, for the last 11 years. Some of its marquee investee companies include Druva, Box8, Sapience Analytics, WOW Momos, Consure, Fareye amongst many others.
IAN has also launched the IAN Fund, an INR 375 crore fund, is a uniquely differentiated seed/early stage Fund which aims to transform India’s entrepreneurial landscape. The fund invests in innovative companies in sectors including healthcare and medical devices, VR, AI, software as a service, marketplaces, fin-tech, big data, artificial intelligence, agritech, and hardware. With this, IAN has created the single largest platform for seed and early-stage investing, enabling entrepreneurs to raise from Rs. 25 lakhs to Rs. 50 crores.