Indus Insights, a leading Data Science & Advanced Analytics Consulting firm, has announced a fresh round of funding. This investment of approximately INR 50 Cr ($6 Mn)., a mix of primary and secondary transactions, has been made by Helix Investments – an India focused PE firm. Helix is known for providing capital and strategic support to growth stage organizations and has invested in the past in several Indian companies, especially in the technology services sector.
“Organizations can unlock tremendous value using data science & analytics, and the untapped potential in the space remains immense. This capital infusion will help us capture this opportunity faster – by fueling the growth of our team in India, aiding the expansion of our senior leadership pipeline, and accelerating the ramp-up of our presence outside India, particularly in North America,” said Saurabh Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Indus Insights. Commenting on Helix Investments coming on board, Neha M Sharma – Co-founder & COO – added, “Helix has that rare combination of investment savvy professionals along with a senior leadership that has decades of experience in running their own businesses. They take long-term view of their investments and have a highly successful track record of investing in profitable and high growth companies. We are excited to build the next phase of Indus Insights with them.”
With this round of investment, some of the early institutional investors in the company, including Unilazer, have made successful exits. At the same time, many of the angel investors continue to stay invested given the strong and consistent growth – Indus has demonstrated an attractive revenue CAGR of 50% over the last 6 years, while maintaining healthy profitability throughout.
Indus Insights was started by IIT Bombay alumni Saurabh Sharma and Neha M Sharma who worked in the Financial Services and Strategy Consulting sectors in the US before setting up the company. Indus Insights became operational in 2011, and it has, in the last 11 years, developed a specialization in the use of analytics in the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) sectors. The leadership team has deep sectoral experience, after having worked at firms like Capital One, Bain & Co, Oliver Wyman, Citibank, and Discover. The company takes pride in building a cutting-edge team of analytics professionals by hiring the best and brightest and then training them extensively. This combination of sectoral expertise and top-notch talent has helped Indus Insights become the preferred data science & analytics partner for many leading and innovative firms globally. The company has clients across four continents, and these include large banks, fast growing fintech & insurtech firms, as well as specialty lenders & other firms in the payments space. Indus adds value to these clients in areas such as credit risk management, marketing analytics, fraud identification, pricing optimization, and customer management.
Indus is now over 100 people strong, with offices in Gurgaon & Bangalore, and another office coming up in Wilmington, DE (USA). The company has been expanding at all levels at a rapid clip. It was in the news last year for hiring in big numbers from IITs – India’s prestigious engineering colleges. In 2021, Dr. David Bergeron – a financial services consulting veteran – joined the senior leadership team as an Executive Vice President. More recently, Ms. Saumya Gupta also joined the leadership team as Director of HR.
Speaking about the investment, David Danziger, Managing Member at Helix Investments USA, said, “We are excited to partner with Saurabh and Neha for the next phase of growth at Indus Insights. They are domain experts who have built a strong global franchise in financial analytics. We were impressed by the company’s high rate of customer satisfaction and retention driven by world class delivery and quality standards. The company has a proprietarily designed, rigorous hiring system that ensures only the best and most-suited candidates get hired. Indus Insights is an organization of choice at premier educational institutions across India, and this record added significantly to the customers’ and our confidence in them. We are glad Saurabh and Neha chose us as they too are looking for long-term partnership. Our proprietary capital allows us to be patient as we have no pressure to return capital to anyone.”
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“Analytics services, like other knowledge service businesses, might seem like a crowded space. At Helix Investments, however, our focus is to invest in niche businesses that are differentiated from competition and add real value to customers. Indus Insights is one such firm within analytics services. It is in line with our strategy to invest in niche IT/ITES businesses which has been highly successful thus far with investments in LearningMate, Netscribes, and Network Intelligence.” said Varun Didwania, Director at Helix Investments India.