NFX Digital bags funding of Rs 6.6-crore, IAN leads

NEW DELHI: Indian Angel Network (IAN), the country’s oldest and largest angel investor group, has led a $1-million (Rs 6.6-crore) funding round in NFX Digital, which owns and operates gamified consumer insights portal, Adytude. com.

While the terms of the investment were not disclosed, IAN member Vikas Kuthiala was the lead investor for the transaction and will be joining the New Delhi-based company’s board.

Founded in 2013 by noted ad-man Shivjeet Kullar and Vir Kullar, the B2B startup’s primary product, Adytude.com, is a portal on which consumers come online to play games on a daily basis, and provide information, which is then sold to clients.

It pulls out relevant information from targeted demographics, depending on the requirements set by its clients. The company counts leading brands such as Hyundai, ShopClues and the Discovery Network among its client roster.

“When we had the idea for this site, the key was whether we could build a relevant community. It wasn’t easy, but now we have thousands of loyal users and the average session time on this site is 14 minutes, which is off the charts — very few sites in India have this level of involvement,” Kullar told ET.

Prior to the latest round, it had raised about Rs 3 crore from ad film makers Prahlad Kakkar and Abhinay Singh Deo, among others.

The startup will expand its footprint across the country and plans to kickstart operations in the UK by the end of the year.

It will also invest some part of the capital raised towards marketing and research.

For IAN, which has over 350 members globally, including Hero Cycles managing director Sunil Munjal, HCL cofounder Ajai Chowdhry and Sanjeev Bikhchandani, cofounder and chief executive of publicly-listed internet company Info Edge, this is the twelfth investment made by it in the current calendar year.

The transaction also comes at a time when early-stage investing, which had touched record levels in terms of volume and value last year, is now, however, beginning to see a slowdown, concurrent with the slump in mid and growth stage investments in India.

Angel and seed deals in the quarter April-June 2016 dropped to 165 transactions, totalling $40.1 million, down from 174 deals valued at $64.6 million from the year-ago period, according to data collated by VCCEdge.

NFX Digital, which earned a revenue of $100,000 last fiscal, is targeting a top-line of $500,000 by the end of the financial year 2017, said Kullar.