Indian Startup Clootrack analyzes brand perceptions in real-time through AI-based platform

One of the biggest challenges that brand managers face is understanding customer perception so they can realign their strategies. There are several ways to measure this perception - social media analytics tools, surveys etc. but none of them succeed in giving real-time perceptions about the brand.

While social media tools such as Sysomos and Radian6 are evolving to measure customer sentiments accurately, the closed surveys are time consuming and are often biased. Clootrack, an Indian-startup, aims to solve this with its AI-driven solution for measuring customer preferences and perceptions in real time.

Founded in April 2017 by Shameel Abdulla and Subbakrishna Rao, Clootrack's AI-driven data analytics platform analyzes customer conversations across various online media as well as customer contact center discussions. The company claims that its proprietary deep learning algorithms are based on proven models and has two pending patents.

Clootrack has also built another product, Cloohawk, which helps the brand to understand the audience for marketing their product. The company claims to have analysed more than 10 billion conversations and extracted 1 million data insights.

“We are glad to have kept our burn ratio low and built the business where healthy traction, better algorithms and deeper use of Machine Learning is showing near real-time results to our customers,” said Shameel Abdulla, CEO of Clootrack, in an interview with The Economic Times.

Shameel is a serial entrepreneur with more than 11 years of experience in technology, products, and startups. He earlier co-founded Jiffstore, a hyperlocal grocery delivery app which was acquired by Peppertap. Prior to that, he co-founded Kode Blink, a mobile app development firm. He dropped out from the Indian School of Business in 2012. Subbakrishna has more than 25 years of experience in the IT sector, and has worked with companies such as AiSoft Technologies and Graphene Services.

The company generates revenue through subscription of its services (SaaS model) targeted at six industry verticals - Pharmaceuticals, FMCG, Retail, Finance, Travel and Automotive. Clootrack claims it has more than 150 companies as clients including BMW, Barilla, Mahindra, Air Asia and Wipro. Crunchbase estimates the company to generate USD 310,000 in revenues annually.

In January 2019, Clootrack raised USD 500,000 in its seed funding round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN), Unicorn India Ventures, SEA Fund and Malabar Angel Network. The investor group from IAN included Kris Gopalakrishnan (co-founder of Infosys), Anthony Thomas (Global CIO of Nissan Motors) and Salliel Gupta. With this funding, Anthony has joined the board of Clootrack. The company plans to utilize this funding to expand in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia.

While the company has identified a niche space with few competitors, its potential threat could be from big players such as Google and IBM entering into Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence phase with massive investments. Clootrack faces direct competition from Bandwatch, which helps brands to monitor and analyze conversations across social media. Brandwatch generated USD 97.4 million in revenues last year.

Synthesio, which also allows businesses to track and analyse real-time consumer conversations across social media channels, generated USD 90 million in revenues last year. Therefore, the key to success for Clootrack is customer stickiness and accuracy of its AI-driven analytics platform.