Synaptic, an alternative data insights startup, raised $20 million as a part of its Series B funding round, led by Valor Equity Partners, the company said in a statement on May 31.
With the funding, Synaptic plans to invest in product innovations, and said it will double down on its data science capabilities, partnerships with data vendors, and expand its go-to-market teams in key global financial hubs. Synaptic will also double its employee headcount to 160 over the next 18 months, according to its founder Rohit Razdan.
"There is a lot of backlog in terms of feature innovation that we want to do and that our customers have been requesting for. What this funding will enable us to do is to hire more people to help us work on those," Razdan told Moneycontrol in a virtual interaction.
"Secondly, Synaptic has grown using word-of-mouth till now. We would now hire a sales team, hire more people in the United States in the sales team and hire a marketing team, helping us put our story in front of more people and we believe that would resonate with many potential customers," Razdan added.
Razdan claimed that Synaptic witnessed a revenue growth of 100 percent in 2021-22 (FY22) and said that he expects revenue to increase 150 percent in the current financial year.
Founded by Razdan and Anurag Abbott in 2016, Synaptic provides a data and insights platform to investors looking to leverage diverse alternative datasets in sourcing and tracking companies of interest, market research, and portfolio monitoring. The company was incubated by Vy Capital, a global technology investment firm with assets worth $6 billion under management.
Synaptic is also looking to expand its operations globally in 2023 as about a tenth of its customer base comes from global operations other than in the US, Abbott said. Currently, the company has offices in India and the US.
“Next year, we plan to set up offices in geographies like Europe, Singapore, and Hong Kong, from where 10 percent of our customer base comes; to be in front of our users and work with them to solve problems,” said Abbott.
The platform brings together over 100 performance metrics such as web and mobile traffic, SEO data, employee data, product reviews, developer activity, search trends, and so on, on hundreds of thousands of public and private companies globally.
Abbott added the platform is not limited to a certain number of metrics but a customer can bring in newer or different data sources specific to their need and Synaptic will help them visualise that.
Antonio Gracias, Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer of Valor said, “Valor has a long history of leveraging alternative data to enhance decision making. As the world becomes more chaotic, the importance of alternative data only grows. We are excited to support the Synaptic team as they enhance the accessibility and utility of alternative data.”
Last year, the company launched the Synaptic Growth Index, which uses proprietary data science and machine learning techniques to give every company a momentum score by intelligently blending multiple performance metrics.
Earlier, the company had raised $6 million in seed and Series A funding from Ribbit Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Vy Capital Management. These companies are among global Venture Capital Funds, Private Equity firms, Hedge Funds, and Asset Managers who trust Synaptic with combined assets of several hundred billion dollars, according to Razdan.
Over the last few days, Moneycontrol had reported on how the startup ecosystem is facing a funding winter amid bearish moods of investors. Razdan said people got more excited in the last few years in the startup party and now there is going to be a bit of a hangover in the ecosystem. However, he believes good startups will still continue to be funded.
"There's going to be a pause, there's going to be a correction. Our belief is that good companies are still going to be found but some of the froth in the market is going to be removed," he added.
