The New Indian Express | Express News Service | 23rd August 2016 |
KOCHI: Kerala’s nascent startup industry got a big boost on Tuesday after US-based FullContact announced the acquisition of Profoundis, incubated at the Startup Village in 2012 and emerged as a successful firm providing technology enabled human verified data research platform. This is the first-of-its-kind acquisition in Kerala’s startup community. Funded by a group of angel investors since mid-2015, Profoundis was founded by a group of enterprising technology professionals who were batch-mates at the College of Engineering, Chengannur, Kerala. Profoundis was the first company from Kerala to get selected to the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator programme, one of the three companies to get selected for ‘Start-Up Chile’, an initiative by the Chilean Government in 2013. FullContact’s purchase of Profoundis follows $25 million in new funding, which the company will use to accelerate its growth, recruit global talent and fund further acquisitions.
“Our goal is to be the smartest, most comprehensive, and most up-to-date address book on the planet.” said Scott Brave, CTO, FullContact. “The only way to truly achieve that is by integrating the best of human intelligence with machine intelligence. Profoundis is a key element of that strategy.” FullContact will integrate all of Profoundis’ 70 employees, most of whom will remain in Kochi, into its global workforce and add human-based data research to its growing list of capabilities supporting its strategy for expansion and rapid growth. This combination will establish FullContact as a market leader in data quality and data breadth across its contact management solutions for individual professionals and businesses and have a direct impact on the company’s revenue and sales. “As a strategic partner, Profoundis has been instrumental to adding value and increasing the effectiveness of our data solutions for our clients,” said Bart Lorang, co-founder and CEO of FullContact. “Together we can further accelerate the growth of FullContact as we continue to build the most powerful fully-connected contact management platform for professionals and businesses.” The deal amount was not disclosed. – Courtesy
Profoundis becomes poster boy for Kerala startups : 24th August 2016
KOCHI: In a first of its kind development in the startup ecosystem of Kerala, US-based FullContact acquired Profoundis, a technology firm based at Startup Village, for an undisclosed amount. Founded by classmates Arjun R Pillai, Jofin Joseph, Anoop Thomas Mathew and Nithin Sam Oommen at Chengannur Engineering College in 2012, the acquisition of Profoundis has scripted history in the State’s startup scene. The company provides an intelligence service called ‘Vibe,’ which sits in the user’s email account and surfaces information about the contacts, much in the same style as Rapportive, the plug-in that was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012. FullContact is a contact management platform for professionals and enterprises. “Being a part of the FullContact team allows us to further execute on this mission globally, and together our users will benefit by having more detailed information about their contacts, which would allow them to be even more awesome with people,” said Profoundis co-founder and CEO Arjun R Pillai who will be FullContact’s head of Data Strategy. The two companies have been partners since one year prior to the deal.
Post acquisition, FullContact will integrate all of Profoundis’ 70 employees into its global workforce and add human-based data research to its growing list of capabilities supporting its strategy for expansion and rapid growth. Most of the employees will be based in Kochi. Profoundis is the first strartup from Kerala to get selected to the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator programme in 2013. Then, it went on to raise an undisclosed seed fund after one year. The company participated in the Startup Chile event as well. “As a strategic partner, Profoundis has been instrumental in adding value and increasing the effectiveness of our data solutions for clients. Together, we can further accelerate the growth of FullContact as we continue to build the most powerful fully-connected contact management platform for professionals and businesses,” said FullContact co-founder and CEO Bart Lorang, adding that the company would look for ‘potential startups’ in Kerala. Profoundis co-founder Jofin Joseph said the acquisition would encourage more funding into Kerala startups, whose visibility is pretty low. “It is the embodiment of the idea that people without any business background can actually start a company and can make it big. If we could do this, anyone can do,” he added. – Courtesy
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