Crayon Data draws in profits with SaaS business

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Hi there,

Nowadays, data permeates every aspect of our digitally driven lives. Our mindless online moves – clicking links, making search queries, and even lingering on a page – can be mined to reveal our identities and desires.

As invasive and dystopian as this may sound, it’s interesting to note that most people are already aware of the fact, and welcome it for the sake of convenience.

Frankly, in a world with an increasingly immense volume of content, services such as Spotify and Netflix would be less interesting and much harder to navigate without their algorithms adjusting their feeds to suit our preferences.

The constant fine-tuning of these technologies has made targeting and personalization much easier for businesses. It has also allowed companies like Crayon Data to thrive.

In this week’s first Big Story, my colleague Collin goes over the Singapore-based firm’s earnings.

Through its Maya.ai platform, Crayon helps its corporate clients extract insights from customer data, allowing them to offer personalized solutions. The firm said its revenue more than doubled in 2021 and expects to turn profitable this year, projecting a 50% revenue growth.

Favoring slow and sustainable growth over vanity metrics, the Jungle Ventures-backed company now has 11 to 12 clients across Asia and is eyeing a US$50 million fundraise to bankroll its growth in Europe and the US.

In our second Big Story, my colleague Nikita looks at Nafas, an Indonesian startup offering subscriptions for “clean air as a service.” This isn’t a Loraxian story though – the firm helps users live a cleaner, healthier life by divulging its air pollution data.

Nikita also had a chat with Australia-based Mandalay Venture Partners to map out its investment plans for Southeast Asia in this week’s Making Waves.

— Shadine

THE BIG STORIES

1️⃣ Decoding a Jungle Ventures-backed SaaS firm’s profitability

Image credit: Timmy Loen

MAKING WAVES

NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW