Startup in stealth gets $4.25M to give mobile apps some weapons of mass acquisition

The real estate on a mobile phone is scarce, and apps are plenty. Hence the intense battle among the biggest internet and ecommerce companies in a mobile-first market like India to capture that space. Fashion app Myntra, acquired by Flipkart last year, has even gone app-only, shutting off access through a mobile browser to focus on its app engagement.

In recent months, this app war has gotten smarter, with the players realizing that the nature of user engagement is far more significant than the sheer numbers of app installs. Just because somebody downloads an app doesn’t mean she will keep using it. Thus the quality of users based on usage data has become paramount.

MoEngage, a Bangalore- and San Francisco-based startup, was set up to do exactly that – provide user analytics and engagement tools to mobile apps to retain their users. In stealth mode since its inception in July 2014, MoEngage today announced a series A funding round of US$4.25 million. The funding came from Helion Ventures and Exfinity Ventures as well as angel investors, including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of ecommerce leader Snapdeal, and Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure (acquired by Ola).

Big ticket clients in stealth mode

MoEngage co-founders Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth Kumar are both IIT Kharagpur alumni, who worked in Cisco and IBM before becoming entrepreneurs. They started a coupons site called DelightCircle before moving on to MoEngage. Over the past year, they built out this mobile marketing platform while working with some of the largest consumer internet companies in India, including Snapdeal, Cleartrip, Yatra, TaxiForSure, RedBus, Gaana, and Oyo Rooms.

Now, with an office in San Francisco, MoEngage is ready to expand. “We will double down on product innovation along with geographical expansion in the US and emerging markets,” says Raviteja Dodda, co-founder and CEO of MoEngage.

MoEngage’s specialty is individual-level personalized interactions via push notifications, in-app recommendations, and other retargeting channels which help to reduce churn and improve customer lifetime value. It claims to be currently profiling one-fifth of the smartphone users in India – there are over 150 million people in India currently spending over three hours a day on their smartphones.

See: How Flipkart got hundreds of thousands of app users with Glispa

New weapons of mass acquisition

Along with global expansion, the funding will help MoEngage add on new weapons of mass acquisition for mobile apps. These include the following: