Nepal Startup CloudFactory Raises $700,000 Round of Funding

We like to keep an eye on the really cool startups when we find them, and they don’t come much cooler than Nepal-based CloudFactory. The service, which we looked at back in March, aims to put a million people to work in developing nations by giving them relatively simple computer-based tasks to complete for corporate clients looking to outsource work like flagging bad content, inputting data, transcribing audio, fixing OCR, tagging images, etc. It is that most perfect of startup concepts: one that seems to boast potential profitability while also providing jobs to tons of people who need them.

It looks like investors are as impressed with CloudFactory as we are, because the company has just raised $700,000 in an oversubscribed round of funding from investors in the US. CloudFactory claims that because the company’s burn rate is “one-tenth” that of startups in Silicon Valley, this is roughly equivalent to a US startup raising a $7 million round. Not too shabby!

The wheels are apparently spinning pretty fast at CloudFactory too; the company is reportedly processing more than half a million tasks per month, and has plans to expand to “more than a dozen” countries. It’s an ambitious plan to be sure, but CloudFactory’s success so far, in combination with this latest round of fundraising, puts it in a pretty good position to take a real shot at its ‘one million cloud workers’ goal.