Synup, a Bangalore-based startup which provides SaaS-based cloud marketing for local businesses, has raised around ₹39 crore ($6 million) in its Series A funding round.
The round was led by Vertex Ventures, along with the participation of the company’s existing investor Prime Ventures Partners.
The startup plans to use the fresh round of funding to improve the technology stack, enter new markets such as Europe and UK by 2018, and to grow its team.
Commenting on the investment, Prime Ventures’ Co-founder and Managing Partner Shripati Acharya said:
We are happy to continue our association with Synup because we truly feel it is the only global Saas player that has emerged out of India. The product is not restricted by geography and is sector agnostic, which means it has immense scaling opportunity. They have grown very fast in a short span of time.
Ashwin Ramesh, founder and chief executive of Synup, said:
There is an undisputed need for an automated marketing solution for millions of local businesses across the globe. We have built a unique and cost effective solution and have seen some excellent growth so far and aim to take this to other geographies soon with a wider product offering.
Synup started its business as an online business listing provider. It used to help companies to generate leads by registering them on websites such as JustDial and Craigslist.
Currently, it claims to be managing business listings on over 50 websites in the US and Canada and employs 40 people. It is now focusing on automating local marketing for SMEs and small stores. It manages a company’s location data, presence, reputation and analytics.
For managing such data, it tracks thousands of business profiles online and monitors customer/business interactions to provide automated marketing and leads.
The company has partnered with about 50 information listing aggregators such as Yelp or Google search. Their data are integrated with the Synup platform, which allows businesses to remotely update information across all the listing sites.