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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based software firm ConverSight.ai, which uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to help clients make business decisions, has raised $9 million in new venture funding, the company announced Monday.
New York City-based Surface Ventures was the lead investor in the round, with participation from Boulder, Colorado-based Techstars, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Augment Ventures, Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures and others.
ConverSight.ai participated in the Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator program in 2019, and Elevate Ventures was the lead investor in the company’s $4 million seed round in January 2022.
Including the $9 million Series A funding, ConverSight has raised a total of $15 million since its founding in 2017.
ConverSight.ai cofounder and CEO Ganesh Gandhieswaran said the idea for the company was born out of experiences he had in his previous job at New Jersey-based tech services and consulting company Cognizant. There, he led a data analytics team that helped clients bring their data together from various sources and use it to create reports the company could use to inform its decision-making.
The problem, as Gandhieswaran saw it, is that all the information in those reports can be overwhelming to the company’s decision-makers. “Most of the time, they don’t even want those reports.”
Another issue, he said, is that smaller companies often don’t have the resources necessary to invest in data analytics.
Thus, ConverSight.ai was born. Gandhieswaran described its software platform, called Athena, as a type of virtual assistant similar to Siri and Alexa. Users can verbally ask Athena questions, and the platform can analyze the company’s data and deliver answers in seconds.
The company’s name, a combination of the words “conversation” and “insight,” is a descriptor of Athena’s capabilities.
“We made data analytics available to a smaller company,” Gandhieswaran said. “Athena is bringing the same capabilities as a data scientist.”
As one example, Athena can be used to help manufacturers with supply-chain issues. Using information about how much inventory the company has on hand and how fast its various products are selling, Athena can help figure out how long that inventory will last and when to reorder each of the components needed to make those products.
Athena can also monitor product costs daily and help a company make pricing decisions, Gandhieswaran said. “We are making these small companies super smart.”
ConverSight.ai currently has more than 150 customers, about 70% to 75% of which are in the manufacturing, logistics and retail sectors, Gandhiswaran said.
The company has 75 employees. Of that number, 16 of them are based in the Indianapolis area. A total of 30 employees are based in North America, and others are based overseas, including India and Spain.
Gandhieswaran said ConverSight.ai plans to use its venture funding to hire nine more people for its sales and marketing departments, which will nearly double the size of the team. The company will also invest in research and development to add more features to the Athena platform.
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