‘Data is the new oil,’ says Ratan Tata’s latest investee Crayon Data

Photo credit: KamiPhuc

Indian tycoon and prolific angel investor Ratan Tata yesterday provided Singapore-based big data startup Crayon Data with its third round of funding.

Maya, Crayon Data’s flagship product, is a tool that helps banks, hotels, and digital media companies offer personalized choices to their customers. It’s also in the process of developing what it calls a “global consumer taste fabric” that will map consumer trends across fifteen categories and compare it against Crayon Data’s vast resource of internal (collected from enterprises) and external (gathered on the public internet) data. Crayon Data has already raised US$5.34 million in three rounds of funding, with Jungle Ventures – to which Ratan Tata is an advisor – leading its last US$1.19 million round round in February 2014.

Crayon Data was founded in 2012 by Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri.

This is the eighteenth startup investment by the chairman emeritus of the Tata Sons group of companies in the past two years. In the past year, he’s invested in everything from car portal CarDekho to cryptocurrency startup Abra. He’s also made investments in taxi-hailing service Ola, mobile wallet and ecommerce site Paytm, and Chinese phone and hardware maker Xiaomi. In July, he joined Singapore-based Jungle Ventures as an advisor. He also advises VCs Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures.

See: 15 top-funded ecommerce startups in India this year – with a few surprises (INFOGRAPHIC)In a world full of big data startups, Crayon Data’s key differentiator is its curation, a spokesperson explained in an email to Tech in Asia. “Data is the new oil,” she went on to explain. “Effective management and analysis of data helps cut through the clutter and is the key to creating relevant and effective customer interactions.”

Born out of a need to “simplify the world’s choices,” the startup also focuses on providing traditional enterprises with the same level of engagement as an online business. “Big data companies who can marry expertise on the business and enterprise side of things, with cutting edge data science and technology, are on the winning side.”