Text Mercato, a Bangalore-based cataloging and content technology company, has received a total investment of US $2.6M (INR 20 Cr) in Pre-Series A funding round led by 1Crowd, Mount Judi Ventures and US-based Innospark Ventures. The company had previously raised over US $1M bringing the total raise to US $4M as of date. The round also saw participation from Modulor Capital, Tremis Capital, ah! Ventures and other well-known angels.
Founded by Kiran Ramakrishna and Subhajit Mukherjee, Text Mercato’s product Cataloging.ai powers cataloging automation (product listing automation) and content creation via a suite of AI products addressing data sourcing and management, photo sourcing and automation, text recognition, text generation, and translation at scale for online marketplaces, brands, and sellers.
“While companies tend to build their products around a singular issue such as the image, text, translation, or other solutions, the focus of our product is to do this end-to-end, sans four-five vendors. Our solution provides seamless integration, speed, quality, and cost efficiency for our clients,” says Kiran Ramakrishna, Founder Text Mercato.
The company now processes over 1 million SKUs per month, with a 3X increase in revenue run rate of last year, and this revenue is expected to grow quadruple in the current financial year.
Shoaib Ahmed, general partner at MJV and former president of Tally says “The burgeoning growth of e-commerce in India, coupled with the Direct-to-Consumer boom underscore a massive potential for the Text Mercato suite of products. Further, their upcoming Do-It-Yourself platform, sector agnostic offering & anytime-anywhere deployment across geographies opens doors for significant global expansion”
The capital raised will be used invested in technology in enhancing automation capabilities and category coverage, as well as launch of an exciting DIY (Do-it-Yourself) platform named Rubick.ai, that will support end-to-end cataloging for small and medium brands,” stated Subhajit Mukherjee, Founder, Text Mercato.
The company’s other focus is to expand its footprint in international markets and strengthen its position in India. About 16% of the company’s revenue come from global markets, including the US, UAE, and France, and this international share is slated to jump to 30%+ in FY22-23.
Girichandra Kuchangi, Partner, 1Crowd, commented, “TM is the preferred partner to several of the leaders in the Indian e-commerce sector in the area of product information management that is so critical to discovery, sale and reducing returns in online commerce. We are delighted with the way Kiran and Subhajit are building out this exciting business and continue to partner them in their growth”
Text Mercato currently serves over 50 large brands, including a few international ones. Some of their clients include Myntra, Nykaa, Webedia France, The Luxury Closet UAE, and Live Auctioneers US.
Dr Venkat Srinivasan, Managing Director/Deepak Verma, Partner, Innospark Ventures further explained “As an AI-focused fund, we look for startups that use AI in innovative ways to solve challenging problems. Text Mercato deploys AI to drive automation into the very manual traditional process of online catalog management. This is a global problem that is not easily tackled, and we have been impressed by how strongly their early customers believe in them.
Bhavish Sood, General Partner, Modulor Capital commented, “We invested because eCommerce tools is a growing market driven by consumer tech investments. Cataloging specifically requires an augmented workflow plus product capabilities which Text Mercato has demonstrated.”
The founders added that, “We are also very happy to provide an exit to our earlier angels whose value soared to 12.3X their investment during this round. We thank our investors for their faith in the future growth of this company by facilitating secondary share purchases.”
About Text Mercato
Text Mercato was founded by Kiran Ramakrishna and Subhajit Mukherjee who were based in London and Paris, working for international brands when they realized the growing need for content and cataloging requirements in the Indian market. This persuaded them to bring their international experience and expertise to India. They have been successfully delivering their services to leading global brands across the travel, retail, fashion, realty sectors (among others).
